


jump spark

by goldcarnations



Category: Never Have I Ever (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Lawyers, Banter, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, F/M, Fake/Pretend Relationship, Getting Together, Happy Ending, Mild Sexual Content, Unresolved Romantic Tension, Unresolved Sexual Tension, Weddings, basically ben and devi are competing coworkers in a law firm in syracuse, can you imagine the tension....., they have to fake date for two (2) weddings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-26
Updated: 2020-06-02
Packaged: 2021-03-03 01:33:46
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 20,350
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24046690
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/goldcarnations/pseuds/goldcarnations
Summary: “For your information, my life is extremely glamorous and fun. For example: soliciting my colleague andclose friendfor a sexy, cool favor.”[ alternatively: ben and devi need fake dates for two separate weddings. ]
Relationships: Ben Gross/Devi Vishwakumar, Devi Vishwakumar & Fabiola Torres & Eleanor Wong, background Kamala/Prashant, mentioned Ben Gross/Shira, mentioned Fabiola Torres/Eve
Comments: 125
Kudos: 353





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> hi babes. couple of actual notes before we get started:
> 
> 1) the weddings that happen in this fic are christian/white weddings. it occurred to me that indian weddings are very beautiful, vibrant events and i couldn't bullshit my way into writing them because i was terrified of messing things up. 
> 
> 2) this fic doesn't really deserve the m rating but there are some sexual themes and one paragraph in chapter 3 that has the most _mild_ sexual content that almost isn't even really that sexual. but here we are, better safe than sorry.
> 
> 3) listen. _listen._ even though this is an AU and has absolutely no relation to canon, it is very important that you understand that aged-up ben and devi in canon will be lawyers. it is also important that you understand that ben goes to harvard for both undergrad and law school and now is a pretentious little dickwad because of it.
> 
> 4) please leave kudos and comments ok love you all x

It all kind of starts with a white lie.

Really, it’s—

It’s fucking stupid, the way it starts.

* * *

Kamala is engaged.

Devi finds out over brunch, choking on scrambled eggs and hash, gaping at the golf ball sized diamond on Kamala’s ring finger. 

“You're so surprised,” Kamala says, puzzled at the sight of Devi’s expression. “Did you see the pictures I posted on Facebook?”

No, she had not. Devi missed the Facebook notifications and the flurry of pictures on Instagram when she temporarily deleted her social media apps, and it was precisely for this reason: to avoid grotesquely-filtered pictures of her ex boyfriends and high school friends getting promotions and boyfriends and babies. But whatever, if anyone fucking asks, it’s been _cleansing_ and _refreshing_ and Devi feels _fantastic_. 

Especially now.

Devi closes her mouth and swallows. 

Her finger traces the crisp edges of the cardstock envelope, her nail worrying the paper embossing of their initials. Kamala’s saying something now about weddings and surprises and boyfriends getting down on one knee, and Devi widens her eyes, nods jerkily, aggressively, _encouragingly_. Of course Kamala is getting hitched. And probably to Prince Charming, or someone well on his way to finding the cure for cancer. Or something. 

She sniffs. Eyes the creamy wax seal. 

She’s _fine_. 

She shovels another bite of eggs into her mouth.

“It has just occurred to me,” Kamala is saying, “that I have never introduced him to you. His name is Prashant, and he’s just—amazing, Devi. The absolute perfect gentleman. You’ll _love_ him. He’s asked all about you, you know.”

“I bet,” Devi says. 

“Oh! That reminds me what I came to talk to you about.” In one swift motion, Kamala grabs both of Devi’s hands, and her fork drops to the table with a clatter; widening her eyes, Devi forces herself to match her heightened level of enthusiasm.

Kamala’s eyes are bright with excitement. “I called this brunch to ask you to be a bridesmaid,” she squeals.

Devi’s bitterness melts away, almost. 

“What? Really?”

Kamala nods eagerly. “I wanted to ask you in person,” she gushes. “I know we’re cousins, but you’re like a sister to me. A best friend. I would have asked you to be my maid of honor, but you are always so busy, and I didn’t want to bother you—”

The last of the bitterness dissolves. “Kamala, I am going to make sure you have the best wedding in the history of the universe,” Devi declares. “So what is this? White wedding or Indian wedding?”

Kamala beams at her.

“Both. We are doing a traditional wedding in India later with close relatives and a Christian wedding at a vineyard in Upstate New York.” Kamala picks up her fork and gestures at the invitation with it. “This one is the Upstate New York invitation.”

“Ooh, classy.” Devi resumes eating. “Like a Priyanka and Nick thing. I respect that.”

Kamala presses her hands together. “Now that that’s out of the way, we can plan who’s coming to the wedding! You won’t be needing a plus one, no?”

Devi’s fork stops halfway to her mouth.

The bitterness seeps back, just a little bit.

The truth is no, she wouldn’t be needing one. Frankly, she’s absolutely, totally and completely, never-been-more single. Which is a little unfair, out of context, because most of her formative years were spent in the library—for fuck’s sake, she went to _Princeton University_ for undergrad, and _Yale Law School_ , and now she’s fresh out of working in Big Law, building up a goddamn _career_ —and so, yeah, she’s been fucking _busy_ and that’s—empowering. Or something.

But maybe it’s that outrageously huge rock on Kamala’s hand or the (valid) insinuation that Devi doesn’t have a romantic partner serious enough to invite to a wedding that reminds her of the late nights after work: the loneliness of a dark apartment; the crawling feeling in her stomach of texting someone random on Tinder, knowing for certain that sex is the only goal of the exchange. But isn’t the repressed, lonely career woman the new chic thing to be, according to Cosmopolitan? Isn’t it supposed to be, like, feminist to be allergic to commitment? Business over pleasure?

The diamond on Kamala’s ring winks at her.

Impulsively, Devi steels herself and looks Kamala in the eyes. “Yeah, girl. I’m cuffed.”

She regrets the lie immediately when Kamala’s mouth drops open.

Kamala’s eyes are too excited. “Devi!”

Devi averts her eyes. “You don’t have to look so surprised.”

“This is a _good_ surprise,” Kamala replies happily. “That’s amazing, Devi. I am _so_ excited for you. Who is he? What does he do?”

“Uh…” Devi stalls, stabbing at the sausage on her plate. “Um, he’s at my firm. He works with me. At the firm. As a lawyer.”

“Ooh, a lawyer?” Kamala waggles her eyebrows at Devi. “Good job, Devi. Why haven’t I heard of him before?”

“Oh, well, you know me.” Devi chews through a full mouth of hashbrowns. “Adds to the mystique of, like,” she swallows, “my mysterious and sexy persona.”

Kamala’s typing a memo for herself on her phone with her ring finger, pinky delicately raised. “A plus one it is,” she declares. “This is going to be so fun. I can’t wait to meet him.”

“Right,” Devi says. She smiles back, tight-lipped. “Can’t wait for you to meet him too.”

If she can even find someone to introduce to her, that is.

* * *

Ben Gross is the obvious choice.

He’s pretty much the only other litigator at her firm under forty, even though he dresses like he isn’t. He drives a Mercedes and wears a flashy, ostentatiously large silver Rolex on his left wrist. He maintains an irritatingly sanctimonious attitude about workplace gossip and office decorum; he’s somehow perpetually in the pursuit of buying a yacht. He talks about fishing and the stock market with their balding coworkers, pointedly labels his food in the refrigerator with his name on sticky notes in his bland, crude print, finds every possible way to poach Devi’s clients, and gleefully—actively—engages in vicious, highly personal arguments with her.

He’s a smug asshole, basically.

He’s _definitely_ not her type.

But they’re—friends. Associates, in the technical sense. 

* * *

The choice is apparently not as obvious to Ben when she asks him about it in the break room the next day.

“Really?” he raises his eyebrows in disbelief. “You want _me_ to be your fake date?”

Devi shrugs. 

Ben chokes out a shocked, delighted laugh. “You must be single as hell.”

“Oh, fuck off.”

“Like, more single than I could have ever imagined.” He’s bent over the countertop, clutching his stomach. “Oh man. That’s _dire_.”

“Are you going to help me or not?” she presses, losing patience.

Ben sobers up, slowly. She glares at him while he pretends to catch his breath.

“I mean, I need to know the whole backstory,” he says finally. “How did this even happen?” 

She sighs. “My cousin was asking me if I was bringing a date, and I just—said yes. And then she was asking questions, and I don’t know! I just remembered that I work with men, right? So I told her that I was dating one of my coworkers.”

“You couldn’t have just said you met him off of Tinder or something? Eharmony?” He snaps his fingers. “Bumble? Isn’t that one popular nowadays?”

“Oh please, you use Bumble,” Devi says disdainfully. “We all use Bumble.”

“Actually, I meet plenty of women in real life.” He winks. “I don’t know if you know this, but telling women that you practice law is a real aphrodisiac.”

She wrinkles her nose. “Did _not_ need to know how you trick women into sleeping with you.”

“None of this is a trick, Vishwakumar,” he assures her. “But back to the point: you’ve really got your work cut out for you.”

“Hey, it wasn’t like I was thinking of you when I said it! When I was thinking about our law firm, it slipped my mind that it’s, like, _real_ slim pickin’s around here.”

He looks almost offended. “‘Slim pickins’?”

“I mean, it’s not like we’ve got a Liam Hemsworth practicing law. And you’re pretty much the youngest guy at this firm. Everyone else has kids or an impending midlife crisis.” She grants him a perfunctory once-over. “I guess you’re also not hideous-looking on most days.”

“Excuse me,” he scoffs. He flexes a bicep, but the effect is lost due to the confines of his dress shirt. “I’m a total catch. I’m super jacked, successful, and cool. Totally dateable.”

“That’s literally what I said.”

“I could probably pass as a Hemsworth, honestly.”

She glances at him disdainfully. “We’ll see about that after you hit your growth spurt.”

He clutches a hand to his chest. “Ouch. You’re losing me, Vishwakumar.”

“I am not apologizing for that amazing joke.”

“I’m halfway out the door.”

“Asshole.” She glares at him. “I’m not going to fucking _beg_ —”

“Could’ve fooled me.”

“—and honestly, it’s a great proposition.” She ticks off her fingers. “You’d get free food. Watching declarations of love unfold in front of you is awesome. And you get to spend a weekend with me.”

“Not gonna lie,” he says, shaking his head, “you almost got me with the first two.”

“You know what?” she reacts incredulously. “I’m a _delight_. And probably the funniest person you know.”

“That couldn’t possibly be less true.”

“And the rest of the list wasn’t enough to persuade you?” 

He shrugs one shoulder. “Eh.”

“You should be grateful. I’m basically giving you an escape from your sad, lonely life.”

Ben scoffs. “Or are you giving me a peek into _your_ sad, lonely life?”

“For your information, my life is extremely glamorous and fun. For example: soliciting my colleague and _close friend_ for a sexy, cool favor.”

He straightens, shaking his head. “I’m out.”

Devi huffs as she watches him wash his hands at the sink. “Whatever, Gross. I’ll just find someone hotter and more successful in our firm to come with me.” She adds, a little spitefully, “Shouldn’t be too difficult of a hurdle to clear.”

“Sure, yeah,” he replies easily, wringing out his hands. “Your cousin’s gonna love that your boyfriend is thirty years older than you. Maybe you should have told her you were bringing your sugar daddy as a plus one.”

“You know what? Her reaction would be the same if I brought you.”

He fixes an awful, self-satisfied grin at her. “Seems like you’ve got a great solution to your problem then.”

She scowls at his back as he leaves the room.

* * *

Devi’s luck turns a week later in the form of a cream envelope that is tossed onto her desk when Ben barges into her office without knocking. He’s pacing in front of her desk, in the middle of an impassioned speech about decency and formalities and cheating girlfriends and cheating girlfriends getting married and also nothing in particular. The speech, she notes placidly to herself, goes on for far longer than it needs to.

Ignoring his tirade, Devi scans the envelope with interest: it’s tastefully gilded with a seal already torn through on the back, and the card inside is written entirely in a flowing cursive script.

 _You have been cordially invited to celebrate the wedding of_ —

Devi looks up at Ben, who has abruptly stopped talking. “Who the hell is Shira? And Tristan?”

He grits his teeth, and a tendon in his jaw pulses, once. “That’s my ex girlfriend who is marrying the guy she—”

Devi raises an eyebrow as Ben clears his throat.

“That she cheated on me with,” he finishes. “It’s fucking _karma_ , I tell you. You and your cousin’s wedding did this. You—” He narrows his eyes at her. “Stop. Why are you looking at me like that.”

To his credit, she _is_ doing a poor job of stopping her smile from splitting across her face. 

“What’s happening?” Ben closes his eyes, as if trying to rid himself of a bad headache. “Don’t answer, actually.”

She simpers. Bats her eyelashes. Tries, with difficulty, to keep her voice neutral when she says, “I think I just solved both of our problems.”

Ben gives her a suspicious look, then his eyes widen.

“No way. Not a chance in hell.”

“Ben, you won’t regret this,” Devi assures him. “I’ll seriously look like the hottest girl you’ve ever laid eyes on. Whoever these people are—” she briefly glances down at the names— “ _Shira_ is going to want to kill herself after she sees me with you.”

He rubs his temples.

She sticks out her hand and and says, serenely, “Stop being such a fucking drama queen.”

He sighs, unnecessarily loudly. His grip is firm when he shakes her hand. “Just wear something tight.”

* * *

_just talked to him_ , she texts Kamala right as Ben leaves her office. _hes so excited to come to ur wedding!!! literally shitting himself out of excitement. cant wait for u to meet him xoxo_

* * *

A couple of weeks later Kamala asks Devi to help her pick out a wedding dress, which is how Devi finds herself drunk on a Tuesday afternoon, laying horizontally across a couch in a wedding boutique showroom, trying desperately not to spill the free alcohol into the cushions.

“Kamala, this champagne is really good,” she sings. Right now she’s at the talkative edge of tipsy, the kind that is a glass too far into rosé, the kind that’s fun for gossip at cocktail parties and baby showers and wedding dress shopping. “Remind me why your actual maid of honor turned down doing this.”

Kamala’s muffled voice drifts out from the dressing room, where she’s trying on her fourth wedding dress. “She’s had a work emergency. She was on call and she is in an operation right now.”

Devi hums to herself and places her fingers delicately, mindlessly, on the rim of her now empty glass. “Right, because she is a very fancy doctor,” she titters. “And so you decided to call up your most ratchet bridesmaid?”

“Otherwise known as _my favorite cousin_ ,” is the cheerful reply. “I’m so glad we are spending this time together. I know how busy you are.”

“That’s right,” Devi mumbles, half to herself, “because I am a very fancy lawyer.”

“I’m so sorry I dragged you here from work. You are swamped constantly, I should have found someone else.”

“ _Kamala_. It’s no problem. I’m down to day drink and judge fashion choices at any time.”

Kamala’s laugh, muffled and joyful, is barely audible. “But enough about me. I want to hear about what is happening in your life.”

“Ask away.”

“So what is the deal with this lawyer from the firm, hm?”

The comment doesn’t register at first. Devi knits her eyebrows together, and sits up unsteadily. “Huh?”

“Your boyfriend, silly. The one you told me about during our brunch.”

Devi freezes in the middle of a sip of her—fourth? fifth?—glass of champagne. Stares at the fizzy-bright bubbles at the surface of the alcohol and tries hard to remember how to lie like a normal person. “Uh. Right. His name is Ben Gross.”

“Ben. Like Benjamin?”

“I think so.”

“This is a real relationship right? It’s getting serious?”

“Real as life, babe. And serious as death.”

“I want to know all about him.”

Devi opens her mouth to speak, then closes it, because she genuinely has no idea how to respond to such a broad prompt—how to talk about him or what to say about their relationship. Truthfully, not much had changed in the last few weeks since they agreed upon their arrangement, except that their brutal arguments had calmed down to a level that could be acceptably labelled as banter. 

“He’s—good. We’re doing good.”

“Well, what is he like? Treating you well?”

In a sense: better. “Yeah, we’re doing _so_ good,” Devi babbles. “The best. And we talk…so much. Constantly. You know how… lawyers… boyfriends can be.”

“Of course,” Kamala says knowingly.

The words bubble up from out of nowhere. “We learn so much from each other,” Devi continues, starting to forget to lie. “And the conversations are sometimes, though, too much. Like. Too—like—they get passionate. Intense. We fight a lot.” 

“Oh wow,” says Kamala. “I have never heard you describe a relationship like that before.”

“He knows how to push my buttons,” she pauses to hiccup, “for _sure_.”

“Now I’m curious. Is there something about this Ben that incites this feeling?”

Devi takes another exaggerated sip of her drink and contemplates possible answers. She could respond by describing his conspicuously preppy outfits. Perhaps his Napoleonic approach to litigation and, occasionally, acquaintanceship. Maybe how she detests the way he speaks sometimes to strangers, so unbelievably at ease, enviously charming. 

Or the passion isn’t from a place of hatred, she thinks absently. Maybe it's just for the sake of having a workplace rivalry? Out of competition? Respect?

“You are taking,” she slurs instead, “so damn long to change.”

Kamala pops her head through the doorway to the showroom. “Devi, you are very drunk.”

“Yeah, sweet cheeks. And wondering why you’re taking forever in there.”

A laugh. “Okay, okay. I think I finally found a good dress.”

Kamala finally emerges from the room, covered fully in tulle and lace, looking like a fairy tale come to life. The delicate off-shoulder straps float around Kamala’s arms and the floor-length gown practically billows around her; she looks so ethereal, so purely and wholly _happy_ that Devi can’t help the twinge of want, of _yearning_ for her own dress and wedding and fairy tale. For something real.

“Whoa, you look hot!” Devi exclaims, only a little drunkenly. “Give it a twirl, girl.”

Kamala dutifully spins in front of her, angelic and gorgeous. Devi realizes suddenly when Kamala turns back around that her cheeks are wet with tears.

Devi stumbles up to hug her. “I think this is the one,” she says sincerely.

Kamala’s smile is wobbly, and she nods, hugging Devi back. “I think so too,” she sniffles.

“You seriously look like a smoke show in this dress,” Devi continues, releasing her. “Prashant is going to have a heart attack when he sees you wearing this on your wedding day.” She bumps Kamala with her shoulder. “I think I will too.”

“I am so glad you came today, Devi.”

“Thanks, Kamala.”

Kamala dabs at her eyes and clutches Devi so that they’re both facing the mirror. “I know we don’t see each other too often, and you are obviously so busy with your important career, but it is so good to see you with a nice boy who keeps you happy.”

 _Right_ , Devi remembers again. Because she's not single, because she has a man to bring to a perfect little wedding, and the man isn't her coworker whom she isn't certain is someone who actually _enjoys_ her company.

She exhales. Stares at her reflection next to Kamala in the mirror. She looks disoriented and bedraggled, with her hair sticking up from laying across the furniture, and her body is a little blurry. Distorted like there's some sort of aberration. 

She squints harder. 

Examines the _juxtaposition_ between her and Kamala’s smile and tries not to think, with difficulty, about Ben Gross and relationships and empty apartments.

She downs the rest of her glass.

* * *

She shows up at Shira's wedding exactly thirty minutes after the indicated time on the invitation, which is fifteen minutes after the time she and Ben had agreed on, and she slips out of the Uber wearing a slinky, champagne-gold cowl neck dress which had been entirely too expensive, as well as red lipstick which she had gotten at the closest Walgreens on the way to the venue. 

The first thing Ben says to her when she spots him is: “You’re late.”

“Fashionably,” she corrects, surreptitiously readjusting her strapless bra. “What kind of loser shows up on time?”

Ben looks around pointedly at the guests flocking toward the entrance of the ballroom. “The kind of losers that are all in attendance tonight.”

“Yeah, whatever.” She sets her shoulders back, brushing a lock of hair off her shoulder, and beams at him. “How do I look? I went the classy route, if you couldn’t tell.”

“Not bad.”

“ _Not bad?_ ” she bleats. “I look extremely hot.”

“When I said a tight dress, I meant _tight_ , Vishwakumar.” He looks her over. “But you look good right now too.”

“I’m not going to show up at your ex girlfriend’s wedding looking like a prostitute, even though I would totally pull it off,” she retorts. “And I could get you written up for harassment for that remark.”

Ben rolls his eyes. In many ways, he’s dressed how he would on a normal basis when she sees him at work, all clean corners in a navy blue suit and his steel plated Rolex still gleaming obnoxiously on his wrist, but he also looks somehow _different_ —perhaps younger, more cosmopolitan. His black tie is folded neatly into a windsor knot. His dress shirt is pressed starch, crisp at the collar. His eyes are unnervingly, tremendously blue. 

He catches her staring and teases, “You like what you see?”

This time she rolls her eyes. "You wish."

"I can't help it if you can't keep your eyes off me."

She wishes there were some way to roll her eyes harder, or drive off a cliff.

“So what are we doing today?”

“Well, I don’t know,” he answers, his eyebrows knit. “We didn’t really talk about this before.”

“Do we need to?”

“I don’t know.” Then, “How comfortable are you with touching?”

Devi pauses, chews on her lip. She considers the options that she has. They have to seem convincing, right? “I’m down with anything.”

Ben drops his smirk to give her a sidelong glance. “Really?”

“Well, anything short of you groping me, I’m cool with.”

She watches hesitation flit across his face.

“In fact,” she adds, leveling a gaze at him, “I encourage it.”

He watches her carefully as if he’s trying to read her expression, then puts his hand on the small of her back. “So you’re okay with this?”

His hand is warm and his touch is gentle, feather-light, like he’s afraid to break her. 

“Ben Gross,” she says, keeping her tone as somber as possible, “I want you to man-handle me.”

He clears his throat. “I don’t know if you can handle that,” he warns. “You’ve already threatened to report me to HR in the last five minutes.”

She huffs impatiently. “What I’m sensing from this exchange is that you’re too much of a pussy to hold me like a fucking man.”

He releases a sharp breath, as if in disbelief. “Are you seriously trying to taunt me into grabbing you?”

She holds their gaze. “Too scared?”

She doesn’t expect his next move: she _yelps_ when his hand hooks her around the waist, his hand splayed across her abdomen, and he draws her _close_ to him, so close that she can smell his cologne and feel how firm his body is against her. 

Embarrassingly enough, she melts into his side, instinctively tilting her head toward him. She thinks dimly about how natural this position is, how comfortably his hand is slung on the curve of her body, how easily she could lean her head on his shoulder. Her heart beats a little too quickly.

He slants a look at her, the crinkles around his eyes smug and mischievous. “Is this what you were envisioning?”

She chokes out a laugh. “I knew that you had it in you.”

“Don’t call me a pussy ever again."

“I can’t promise that.”

He chuckles, then releases her. “Let’s get this shit show started, yeah?”

* * *

The ceremony flies by, and Ben and Devi get through most of it without fighting, and even find themselves strangely, grudgingly close in the way people can be after doing tedious tasks or punishments together. At the reception Devi eats as many shrimp cocktails as she can get her hands on, Ben steals breath mints out of Devi’s purse when he thinks she isn’t looking, they take turns making fun of the guests and tacky flower arrangements and the best man, who spends entirely too long rambling about the groom’s ex girlfriend, and it’s actually—fun. _Friendly_. 

Devi watches him tense up when Shira stands up to talk. Notices how the color leaves his face when she gushes about whirlwind romances and how his jawline tightens when Shira licks the cake off of her new husband’s fingers. Looking at him, she realizes there’s not exactly a protocol for comforting a fake date whom she wasn’t really _friends_ with until today.

But she tries her best to help him anyway, despite her better instincts. She squeezes his hand whenever he points out any one of Shira’s friends to her. She leans against him and tips her head up to smile at him as adoringly as she can muster while he talks to his old college acquaintances about lacrosse and beer and also, somehow, nothing. She pretends to feed him cake and twirl her hair and _giggle_ and, even with Ben’s odd, inquisitive looks, it feels fine. As normal as it can be, really.

“What exactly are you doing?” Ben finally asks her faintly when she presses closer to him after his third conversation with someone called Chad, seemingly unaware of Shira’s presence nearby.

“Making you look good in front of your ex,” Devi answers, cursory, automatically. “Isn’t that my job?”

“It’s just surprising… your lack of disgust.”

Across the room, Shira laughs and presses a long, open-mouthed kiss to her new husband.

Devi drags her eyes away and offers belatedly, “It’s not like I want to vomit at the sight of you.”

“Thanks, I guess.”

“And of course, you do what you gotta do.”

“Right,” he says, furrowing his eyebrows. “You’re just a lot more performative than I was expecting.”

“We’ve established that I’m an amazing actress.”

He’s watching her carefully, closely. “And this is all just acting?”

“You wanted me to be convincing.” Devi sniffs. “Isn’t method acting kind of the whole deal?”

He wets his lips, his eyes distant. He places a hand on her back again, gentle again, unsure. “Method acting,” he repeats.

“And your ex girlfriend is right there.” She draws her arms across herself, defensive. “Plus I said I was okay with anything.”

His eyes snap to hers. “Shira? Where?”

“ _Benjamin_!” Shira calls out suddenly, noticing them from across the room, flapping her hands at them.

It’s too comfortable, Devi thinks with a start, the way Ben’s hand slides from her back to her side. Disconcertingly _easy_ . And as Shira grabs her new husband and stumbles over to them, Ben looks over at Devi with a blue-eyed glance of exasperation and distaste and distress, maybe even with a feeling of shared _camaraderie_ , readjusting his hand position so that his grip is warm and _firm_ on the soft silk covering her hip—

Devi plasters on her best grin and leans into it. 

She doesn’t think too hard about it. 

She _tries_ not to think too hard about it.

* * *

Ben abandons her in the middle of the reception. She realizes this with her hands full from holding two flutes of alcohol, coming back to his empty seat.

Leaving the glasses at their table, Devi scans the room wildly. The thing about weddings is that there’s not a single recognizable face and everyone is too drunk to remember their last names, much less give a single fuck about some white guy walking out. The latter proves to be especially true at this wedding, she realizes after her fifth futile attempt at figuring out Ben’s whereabouts. 

It takes far too much searching, but she eventually finds him sitting in the parking lot, sitting on the hood of his car with his back to her.

“Gross? Ben?” she ventures. “ _Ben_. Is that you?”

He doesn’t move, but she knows from the broad curve of his back that it’s him. As she approaches his side, his eyes stay fixed on the horizon.

“Ben?” Devi tries. After a beat of uncertainty, she pats him gently on the arm. “Hey. You good?”

This seems to snap him out of his trance. He blinks rapidly, then his eyes focus on her. “Devi.”

She gestures to his hood. “May I?”

He moves to make room for her as she scoots onto the car. The sky around them is spectacularly, violently crimson and bathes their surroundings entirely in a rosy, wan light, coating everything in a layer of orange. The clouds in the distance are wispy and messy and golden. She breathes in the crisp air deeply; it bites at her nose and numbs her slowly from the inside out.

She glances at Ben from the corner of her eye and she’s suddenly aware of the stark difference between his buttoned-up appearance this afternoon and his look now. He’s loosened the knot of his tie and undone the top button at his collar. His normally tidily gelled hair is unkempt and rumpled, ruffled slightly by the breeze.

He looks—disheveled. Strangely _haggard_.

It’s unsettling.

“Look,” she starts nervously, “I don’t know what’s going on, but if you want to talk, I’m here to talk. I know that this is weird for you—it is for me, too, even though it was my idea—that you’re at your ex’s wedding with a fake girlfriend. And I feel like, well, maybe we’re friends now? Or whatever. So if something’s wrong—”

“Devi,” Ben interjects. “Stop.”

She immediately quiets.

“I need to apologize to you,” he says. “I shouldn’t have just ditched you. Back there. That was—short sighted of me.”

Devi releases a breath she wasn’t aware she was holding. Ben has never apologized to her before. “It’s okay.”

“And I’m sorry for saying all that shit about you being single,” he continues to her surprise, his eyes still on the horizon. “That was really out of line, and I feel bad about it. I shouldn’t have done it.”

“Um,” she says. “What.”

“Also, I’m sorry I dragged you here today. It was a bad idea to come. And you were such a good sport too, about all the pretending and faking—”

“Hey man,” she interrupts, “is there something going on? Are you okay?”

She watches him swallow. “Why do you ask?”

“Just the sheer amount of apologizing you’re doing right now. And you’re being really nice, which is kind of fucked up, to be honest.”

His jaw unclenches; he finally turns to look at her. His eyes are a striking, wild shade of azure. 

“No. I’m not doing that good.”

“Do you want to talk?”

He doesn’t say anything at first, so she prompts again, “Ben?”

“Sorry, I just—” he sighs. She looks down to see his hands in fists, knuckles resting on the hood. “She—Shira—was my last long-term girlfriend. We dated for a really long time—we were college sweethearts, since our senior year.”

“Oh.”

“When I was dating her… I kind of thought this was going to be us. Me and her. That this wedding was going to be ours.”

“And then she…”

“Yeah.” He looks back at the horizon. “And now she’s marrying this guy. Like the four years we had together just didn’t matter.”

The sky is livid with color, all magenta and orange hues.

“That really sucks, Ben,” Devi says, her voice small. “I’m sorry.”

“It’s fine.”

“Are you still into her?” she asks. “Like, is this wedding bringing back feelings?”

“God, no. I’m completely and totally over her.” His voice is far away. “But I just—couldn’t stand to be at the party anymore. Seeing her dance with everyone there, knowing that this is probably the greatest day of her life… when I’m still, like, this emotionally stunted loser who hasn’t been on a date in months.” He laughs, brittle. “I’m just mad at myself, I think. Not her.”

Devi’s head spins; it’s a revelation, really, to see Ben so open and vulnerable about his past. To listen to his internal dialogue, which is unexpectedly endearing and self-deprecating and kind of relatable, all adjectives she previously would never have used to describe him. To be doing something other than talking casually about work or exchanging barbs about each other’s appearances and love lives.

“If it makes you feel any better,” she offers, “at least you’re not the most emotionally stunted loser in this conversation.”

He looks at her, apparently perplexed. 

“I haven’t been on a real date in forever either, and the last time I slept with someone whose name I remembered was, like, in November. And,” she adds, “I literally asked you, my coworker, to be my fake boyfriend for a wedding.”

He laughs, and when he grins sheepishly at her after she realizes that this is the first genuine smile she’s ever seen from Ben Gross. His smile is crooked and daffily charming, even a little bashful, and she notices how he has dimples in both cheeks. 

He is—astonishingly cute. Actually attractive, when he isn’t an asshole. 

Another gust of wind blows by and Devi shudders against the cold with a sharp intake of breath.

Ben’s smile shifts into concern. “God Devi, you’re practically blue.”

Her teeth chatter. “Yeah, this dress isn’t exactly the warmest thing I own.”

For a moment, he’s holding his hands out like he’s not sure what to do, then she hears the rustle of fabric and suddenly he’s draping his blazer over her shoulders. She shivers at the accidental contact of his hand on her bare shoulder when he tucks the lapel around her. 

“You didn’t have to do that,” she protests half-heartedly. “I’m not like, some _damsel in distress_ that needs saving.”

“I wanted to."

His jacket smells like detergent and a heady scent, vaguely spicy, that she can’t exactly place. She feels small with it draped over her shoulders; it’s surprisingly comforting. “Still,” she says, significantly less articulate. “I’m fine. Whatever.”

He’s shaking his head.

“Are you always this difficult with everyone?”

“Only with you.”

The sky is purple now, bleeding remnants of scarlet into the clouds. 

“So what now?” she asks finally.

He fixes a pensive look at her. “Am I taking you away from the party?”

She scoffs. “No. Shira and her new husband are, like, two actual nightmares personified. I don’t want to mingle with their garbage friends.”

She can hear the amusement in his voice when he replies: “Good.” 

“You know,” she muses out loud, “I’ve never really seen you like this.”

“Yeah?” he eyes her. “Like what?”

She studies him again. Watches him run a hand through unruly, short dark hair. Examines the stubble at his jawline, the wind induced blush high on his cheeks, the pleased, bemused slant of his eyebrows. Contemplates his eyes, cunningly blue, almost black in the fading sunlight.

He’s less haggard, she decides, than he is rugged.

“Like you finally pulled that stick out of your ass,” she says instead.

His mouth quirks upward. “Just when we were finally getting along.”

“I mean it in a good way.” She turns back forward, avoiding his eyes. “I like the whole loosened tie, unbuttoned look. You look like you’re capable of having fun. Unlike that uptight dork from work.”

“Not as much of a compliment as you think it is.”

“You can just say thank you and then we can move on.”

“Okay, then _thank you_.”

“No problem.”

The last of the sunset dies in the hazy amethyst of the sky, and the stars start peeking out, winking at Devi, as if they know something that she doesn’t. The silence between the two of them is oddly comfortable. She subconsciously pulls his blazer more tightly around herself and then feels a bit like she’s suffocating, somehow. 

“Well,” she says, “I guess that’s it then.”

His eyes are very dark, and he takes a long time to answer. 

“I guess so.”

“So I’ll just—” Devi scrambles for words. “I’ll call an Uber.”

“Are you sure?” he asks. “I mean, I can drive you—”

“It’s okay, Ben,” she replies, smiling, “it’s easier this way. Efficiency and all that.”

A soft laugh. “Sure.”

“So, are we still on for Kamala’s wedding?” she asks carefully. “Because I had a lot of fun. Even though this was—” she gestures, searching for the words, “kind of wack, honestly.”

“I had fun too.” Ben pauses. “Yeah, okay. Let's do it."

She beams at him and slides down from his car. As she begins to take off his blazer to return to him, he stops her and readjusts it on her shoulders, and his fingers carelessly brush her skin again. 

It shouldn’t mean anything. It _doesn’t_ mean anything.

She shivers anyway.

“What are you doing?” she asks breathlessly, shrugging out of his touch.

“Keep it on, you’re going to get cold,” he insists. “Just return it to me at work. It’s not a big deal.”

This time Devi doesn’t argue with him. She nods and smiles, and waves goodbye as he pulls out of the parking lot. The stars gleam dimly in the night sky and the blazer feels like a hug around her shoulders and she feels _giddy_ for some unknown reason, like everything is okay, or at least the most okay it’s been in a long time.

Then—

 _Oh my fucking god_.

(It’s so fucking stupid, she thinks to herself that night, that _this_ is the way she starts liking Ben Gross.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [my tumblr/shithole/etc](https://shakespeareans.co.vu)


	2. Chapter 2

Devi decides over the course of the next week that she doesn’t have a crush on Ben. 

It’s not a crush, because crushes are—silly. Trivial. She’s a career woman, a lawyer, and even sometimes a bitch, in the trendy, reclaimed, new-wave feminism way. She doesn’t have the capacity or the time to pursue romantic involvement with men who put themselves in a position to date her, much less _chase_ ambiguous feelings about a coworker in what was shaping up to be a wholly _platonic_ relationship.

But, candidly, she knows that Ben is good looking. Cute, really, when he scoffs at her jokes, tips his head down in that knowing, exasperated movement that is entirely too fond for her comfort. Even somehow _attractive_ when he makes comments about her work ethic and unprofessionalism, which lately had become more joking than malicious.

 _I don’t have a crush on Ben Gross_ , she thinks to herself, a little hysterically. _I don’t have a crush on Ben Gross, I don’t have a crush on Ben Gross._

She breathes out.

She doesn’t have a crush on Ben Gross.

Simple as that.

* * *

Fabiola and Devi meet Eleanor in what is very clearly a frozen yogurt place meant for children, located five minutes away from her apartment. The location seems more than a little juvenile and the yogurt there is truly, improbably expensive, but Eleanor had insisted on satisfying her period cravings, and Devi still ends up filling her entire 12 oz cup with chocolate and cookies and cream swirl, dolloping gummy worms and brownie bites on top with a generous hand. 

The place is oddly empty, except for a single, bored teenager scrolling on her phone behind the register. This still doesn’t stop the three of them from seeking privacy in a corner next to the windows, cramming into plastic seats that are a bit too short for adult women. They place their cups on the tacky, sterile white table to the sound of buzzing frozen yogurt dispensers.

“So,” Fabiola begins once they’re all seated. “Long time no see.”

“I called us here today because the effort being put into this friendship was lacking,” cries Eleanor. “I had no choice, since neither of you answer your text messages.” She trains her eyes pointedly at Devi at this. “ _One_ of you in particular.”

It is with that sentiment that Devi realizes that this isn’t so much a reunion as it is a scheme to dig extensively into Devi’s personal life. As with most of Eleanor’s schemes, Devi also realizes that she is powerless to stop her.

“I know El included me, but she’s got a point with you,” says Fabiola. “I mean, we have no idea what you're doing. I know more about _Kamala’s_ life than yours. Tell her I said congrats on the engagement, by the way.”

Devi huffs, but she knows that her annoyance is misplaced. She should have foreseen a dramatic reaction and a subsequent intense catching up from her behavior of deleting her social media and communicating in sparse texts. “Will do.”

“Dish, bitch,” Eleanor demands. “Fabiola’s life has been so boring since she embarked on monogamy and I need my gossip.”

“Ah, right, Fab—you’re banging that tattoo artist, right? The one with the badass pixie cut?”

“Eve just moved in a week ago,” Fabiola supplies helpfully, “and we’re thinking about adopting a pet cat together.”

“Nice,” offers Devi obediently. 

“That’s cool, Fab.” Eleanor pats Fabiola on the back. “Now shush and let Devi talk.”

Devi shovels several large scoops of yogurt into her mouth before she responds, so quickly that she can’t even take the first few. She tries to slow down on her fourth scoop, and the sticky-sweet bite is soft and rich and luxurious; it melts on her tongue, coats her mouth with an addictive, artificial taste of fudge. 

She’s not technically a fan of frozen yogurt, but it’s pleasant. Even the subsequent freezing numbness in her head is pleasant. At least, a lot more pleasant than finding the most succinct way to tell her friends about her accidental, ambiguous emotions about her coworker.

She settles on: “I just found a date for Kamala’s wedding, is all.”

Eleanor’s eyes widen. “You’re not dating anyone, are you?” 

“No, it’s temporary. It’s a fake date.”

“That’s fun,” Fabiola says. “I pretended to be Alex Gomez’s girlfriend before at a straight wedding and had a blast. Do you guys remember Alex? From high school?”

“Well? Who’s your date?” Eleanor urges Devi.

Devi eats another heaping spoonful of cookies and cream before mumbling around it: 

“It’s Ben. From work.”

Both of her friends gasp—too dramatically, she thinks, two parts sullen and one part amused. 

“Seriously? _Ben From Work_?” Eleanor leans in closer, suddenly extremely interested. “Didn’t you use to complain about him all the time to us when you started working at your firm a year ago?”

Fabiola jabs her spoon at them aggressively to interject, eyes wide from the memory. “Yes! You were never not talking about him.” She drops her voice several pitches to produce a terrible imitation of Devi’s voice: “ _Ben From Work is stealing my clients. Ben From Work is such a suck-up. Ben From Work is pissing me off_.”

Eleanor eagerly joins in the charade. “ _Ergh, I have to listen to Ben From Work present to the senior partners_.” 

She mimes Devi gagging, and Fabiola snickers while Devi rolls her eyes, now completely sullen.

“Yeah, it’s ‘Ben From Work’.” Devi makes quotes, and grumbles, “Guess what: he’s still a suck-up. And he also still pisses me off.”

“Clearly not as much has he used to,” Eleanor comments slyly. 

“Why him?” Fabiola presses. “If you can’t stand him so much, why is he your fake date?” 

Devi pauses to watch frozen yogurt melt in her spoon. For some reason, there’s a part of her that gives her pause in sharing this specific event with her friends, even though Fabiola and Eleanor are her best friends. It’s not exactly embarrassment.

It’s more like intolerable, repressed confusion.

“It’s a long story,” she mutters. 

Two decades of friendship experience and two sets of expectant eyes on her tell her that her answer is unacceptable, so Devi adds reluctantly, “I kind of told Kamala that the plus one was from my law firm. And Ben needed a date for his ex’s wedding.”

Fabiola nods. “So it was a _quid pro quo_ type thing.”

Eleanor has become increasingly amused, still unsatisfied with Devi’s response. “You understand that weddings are a breeding ground for chaos, right?”

Devi eyes her.

“You know. Of the sexy and emotional sort.”

“I’m aware, Eleanor.”

“Have they both happened yet?” Fabiola cuts in, talking around her spoon. “The two weddings?”

“Kamala’s isn’t for a few weeks. The other one… happened last weekend.”

Two sets of eyebrows shoot up when Devi abruptly absorbs herself in examining the contents of her frozen yogurt cup.

“Okay, so _that’s_ what you meant when you said that you were aware of the _sexy and emotional chaos_ ,” Fabiola concludes. “Something happened at that wedding.”

“And you’re gonna tell us what that something was,” Eleanor declares. 

Devi’s not exactly sure if it’s Eleanor’s triumphant tone or the way they’re sitting across the table from her like an interrogation, but the urge to share her turbulent emotions finally spills out of her. 

“Ben and I had a moment. We had a moment, okay?” Devi throws her hands in the air in a shrug. “There was a moment. Maybe like—a _few_ moments, fine, don’t look at me like that, Eleanor. But we were doing all that fake date stuff, the hand holding, et cetera, and then we had a talk afterward and now—” She puffs out an exasperated breath. “I don’t have a crush on him, okay. I don’t.”

Both of their faces are soft now, in a way that's not exactly pitying but definitely pretty close. Devi feels sick.

“No one said that you did,” consoles Fabiola.

“I keep making the wedding night a big deal in my head when all we did was _talk_.” She sighs. “I still think Ben Gross is a jerk. But he’s also a jerk that can be really nice."

Eleanor makes another sympathetic noise. Fabiola pats Devi’s arm tenderly while giving a sheepish thumbs up to the clearly eavesdropping cashier across the room.

Devi throws her arms onto the table and buries her head into her elbow, and the rest pours out of her. “I feel like a fucking high schooler,” she groans, voice muffled. “And the other thing is, like, I’m supposed to be this career woman, right? I’m not supposed to have feelings for someone who’s basically my arch rival. He’s a _distraction_.”

“He doesn’t have to be a distraction,” says Eleanor. “You can be one of those women who ‘have it all’.”

“Women who ‘have it all’ don’t exist,” Devi responds dejectedly into her elbow. “They’re an unattainable construct made to deceive other women. Like tampons with ultra-absorbency, or healthy brownie recipes.”

Eleanor gapes at her. “Are you going to sit here and disrespect Gwyneth Paltrow? _Beyoncé_?”

“Fake. They’re not real.”

“It just seems like you don’t really know what you want,” Fabiola tells Devi patiently. “You should sit down with him tomorrow and just—talk. Do you want just your arrangement, or do you want more?” She pauses, then reminds her sagely, “You’re allowed to want more.”

As Devi raises her head to look at Fabiola, she remembers her plans with a groan. “Oh shit. Kamala wants me to have dinner with her and Prashant tomorrow. What am I going to do now?”

“Seems like the perfect opportunity to figure out your feelings for him there.” Fabiola sets down her spoon. It’s comforting to listen to her talk because of how methodical she is; Devi finds herself nodding automatically. “Invite Ben. Go to the dinner and talk to him. Maybe it’ll give you some clarity. And then you can regroup before Kamala’s wedding.”

The way Fabiola talks, so certain and pragmatic, makes Devi wonder why she was so opposed to tell her friends about her problems before.

“Fab,” Devi says. “You are the wisest person I know.”

“No rush,” Eleanor adds. “But get your shit together.”

“Figure out what it is that you want,” Fabiola says again with finality.

Devi squeezes her eyes shut and stuffs her mouth with one last bite of yogurt. 

“I love this for us,” Eleanor announces happily, to no one in particular. “Bonding over suffering. _Yes_. Okay. Who’s problems are we digging into next?”

* * *

Surprisingly, Ben immediately agrees to accompany her to the dinner. Unsurprisingly, Kamala immediately agrees to accommodate for this unanticipated attendance.

The next day, Devi spends hours before the dinner standing in a growing pile of clothes in front of her mirror. She had told herself not to spend too much effort into finding something to wear, but still nothing looks right on her body, and she has a sneaking suspicion that her self-criticism has something to do with the guest she’s bringing to dinner.

She stares balefully at her reflection. How the hell did she get herself into this mess? The arrangement was supposed to be simple: two weddings, no other strings attached. The arrangement did not include catching feelings, surprise dinners, or an overwhelming desire to drown in Ben’s cologne.

Her reflection has her arms wrapped around her torso, hugging herself. She still looks blurry. She still looks lost.

Devi rummages through her closet once more and finally zips up an emerald-green dress that she finds in the back. She studies herself from the front, then twists and looks over her shoulder to examine her side profile. The dress is a slim fitting thing, waistline sewn high and neckline sewn low, flattering her collarbones and just enough of her breasts. She had been saving this dress for a special occasion, but introducing a fake boyfriend to her cousin and her cousin’s fiancé was special enough, she supposed.

* * *

She shows up early to the restaurant, but Ben still beats her. He’s standing on the sidewalk in front of the entrance, idly reading something on his phone, his hand at his neck. 

He jumps when she taps his shoulder in greeting. 

“You’re early,” he remarks, shoving his phone into his pants pocket. He’s wearing his work clothes. She also notes, with horror, that he still looks good.

“Don’t sound so surprised.”

He snorts. “My bad.”

“And you’re _really_ early,” she says back. “How long have you been here?”

He checks his huge watch. 

“Ten minutes or so.”

“ _Jesus_ , dude.”

“Drove here straight from a deposition,” he explains, and his edges of his mouth are wry and his gaze is bleary and she notices with a start that he seems a bit worn. “Didn’t want to miss the dinner or get lost.” He scratches at his jaw where a patch of stubble is starting to show and makes an embarrassed wince. “I should have shaved before coming.”

She stamps down the twinge of guilt for forcing him to attend dinner. He had agreed to come, she reminds herself, and had responded immediately too, if that made a difference.

“It’s fine. It’s just us, Kamala, and Prashant.”

He nods, then he looks back at her and she swears that his expression—shifts. She doesn't know exactly how to label it, but all she knows is that it happens in a split second: his jaw tightens and his eyes are a stunned, dazzling sapphire; the fatigue on his face melts into a strange, unconscious curiosity.

“Do you—” he clears his throat. “Do you always wear this kind of thing? To dinner?”

She looks back, confused. 

“What do you mean?”

“Nothing,” he says. He darts his glance away from her and breathes out sharply, like he’s scoffing at himself. “Nothing, just—you look good.” 

She feels his attention on her again, a nonchalant sweep of his eyes that linger on the necklace resting on her collarbones and flicker to her mouth. 

Then his eyes are on her’s again and she tells herself that she had imagined the whole thing.

“I figured that I would clean up a little,” she responds briskly. “I mean, we’re about to have dinner with my cousin and her fiancé, whom I’ve never met. Why not make a good first impression?”

“Fair enough,” he concedes, then laughs in a way that seems self conscious. “Just—yeah. Looking at you, I feel like I should have dressed up more.”

She can’t have imagined it. She couldn’t have imagined it.

Devi smoothes her hair back, and says airily, “Well, the food’s inside, isn’t it?”

Now this is familiar territory. He opens the door for her and mocks, “Ladies first.”

* * *

“ _So_ ,” starts Kamala, drawing out the syllable, already mildly drunk from the wine Devi had immediately ordered before they sat down. “I _finally_ get to meet you, Ben Gross. Thank you for making the time to have dinner with us.”

Next to Kamala is Prashant, who lifts his mouth in a welcoming smile. Devi doesn’t entirely know what to make of him, with his gorgeous bone structure and his insistence on hugging her when they meet, but if he’s Kamala’s partner he’s probably as perfect as he looks. 

“It sounds like you drove a long way from your previous engagement,” Prashant is saying over his menu. “It means a lot that I could meet the both of you.”

“It was no trouble, I actually live around here,” Ben responds. “When Devi invited me, I couldn’t say no.”

He reaches behind her to give Devi’s shoulder a squeeze, and for a moment it’s hard to breathe—her stomach fucking _flutters_. It’s not supposed to flutter. 

She fixes her face into an affectionate expression.

“I wanted him to meet you, and what better opportunity than the first time I get to meet Prashant?” Devi says, keeping her voice warm. “I wasn’t about to bring a total stranger to your guys’ wedding.”

“Oh, of course not.” Kamala waves a hand dismissively. “I’m sure we will get to learn all about Ben today, you know, besides what Devi has been telling me about you already.”

Ben looks up, at once interested. “Has she now?”

“Oh, absolutely,” Kamala replies slyly. “All good things, of course.”

He sets down the menu, smiling innocently in Devi’s direction. “I’d love to hear what was disclosed. Unless that’s confidential, in any way.”

“Well, really, she didn’t go into too much detail. All she told me was that the two of you were coworkers, and that you make her happy.” Kamala winks at Devi. “And of course that you were very smart and successful.”

Without looking, she can feel Ben’s smirk become three times more smug. “Can’t argue with that assessment.”

There are, she thinks, few ways to die a slower death than the moment she’s experiencing right now.

“It would be great to know more about you guys,” adds Prashant. “You two seem like a great couple.”

“Yup,” Devi says. “So, very true.”

“That’s us,” Ben agrees.

Kamala beams at Prashant, then at the two of them. “I want to know all about how the two of you met.”

Ben glances at Devi. “Well, we work at the same firm, as she said,” he answers easily. He’s immediately charming, the way he leans toward them, rests his elbows on the table and uses his hands; Devi can practically feel Kamala and Prashant moving closer to him. Like flies to a light. “We’d been working together for a while, and,” he shrugs, “I guess she felt a sort of—attraction. To me. I guess she couldn’t stay away, and after throwing herself at me for months, I finally agreed to a date with her.”

Kamala giggles, delighted. Ben smiles at Devi, crooked, _smug_ , as if it was a sweet thing he had just confessed to everyone. His dimples are suddenly extraordinarily less cute.

Devi smiles back, tight-lipped. 

“Yes, I did ask him out,” she chirps. “Because as a twenty-first century woman, it’s actually very feminist of me to do so. Shows how assertive I am.”

“Adorable,” Kamala sighs. 

Ben’s grin broadens. “Isn’t it?”

“What really drew you to Ben?” Prashant asks. “Was it just the proximity? The chemistry?”

Devi tries to tamp down the prickles of annoyance and panic from Prashant’s curiosity and runs through scenarios of suitable responses. Maybe she can make up another story to embarrass Ben, something about how she felt bad for him for being obsessed with her. 

She glances over at Ben, and he smiles at her fondly, relaxed. He drapes his arm around the back of her chair and his shirt tightens over his chest and _god_ , he’s attractive. It’s a reminder of her feelings about him.

Maybe she doesn’t have to pretend. 

“I think it was a culmination of those things,” Devi says slowly, looking away from him. “He definitely keeps me on my toes.”

She pauses, searching for the words. The silence draped over the table is expectant.

“Um, I don’t know,” she continues quicker, “when we became friends, he was just. You know. Very poised, smart. Charming on a good day. And he makes me laugh a lot, especially when I’m feeling upset. He’s very sweet when he wants to be.”

She drags her eyes to him and he’s looking at her like he did before they entered the restaurant, when he asked her about her dress. A look that’s hesitant and dazed, some gray area farther than fond; a gaze that hesitates at her lips before he tears his eyes away and clears his throat.

“That’s very sweet,” gushes Kamala. The conversation picks up from there, something about how Kamala fell in love at first sight when she met Prashant, but Devi’s heartbeat rings so loudly in her ears that the subject changes when she forces herself into the discussion again.

* * *

The rest of dinner goes remarkably well, and Devi is a lot less drunk than she had anticipated by the time they leave the restaurant. 

“It was so nice of you two to come by and have dinner with us,” Kamala says graciously, like she always is, and she even hugs Ben goodbye outside the restaurant. 

Prashant and Ben awkwardly shake hands as Kamala wraps her arms around Devi. Kamala leans close to her ear and whispers, “He’s a keeper.” Then she winks at her, like it’s their secret.

Devi smiles back robotically, kisses Kamala on the cheek. She almost doesn’t know what secret she’s keeping, truthfully.

* * *

Ben offers again to drive her home, and this time she accepts; she doesn’t know exactly why she lets him take her but she can’t find it in herself to call a cab. They walk side by side without a word all the way to his parked car, up until when she buckles herself into the passenger seat. 

“So, how did I do tonight?” Ben prompts first, his voice light. “Do you think Kamala’s gonna let me into her wedding?”

Devi releases a breath she didn’t know she was holding. Everything is supposed to be back to normal, whatever that means. She wills herself to act casual.

“I hate to say it, but she loves you.” Devi allows herself a brief glance to his face. “You charmed the pants off of her—and Prashant. Like, that was crazy.”

“Really?”

“Yeah, it’s like your secret talent. Putting random people you’ve never met under your spell.”

“What can I say? I have a gift.”

His smug tone breaks the ice; she can’t help her incredulous laugh. “That was—you—just absolutely _shameless_. Fishing for compliments like that.”

His smirk is practically audible. “You were more than happy to provide.”

“Ugh, I can’t stand you.”

“Not from what I heard tonight,” Ben hums. He looks over to raise an eyebrow. “By the way, I have to ask: you’ve been talking to Kamala about me?”

“Oh my god,” Devi groans. “Don’t listen to her, she was drunk.”

“So you _didn’t_ tell her that I was successful and smart.”

“I wasn’t going to tell her that you were an ugly hermit!” she retaliates defensively. “I have standards, after all. Plus, you know me.” She turns away from him. “Method acting, remember? Gotta keep up the pretense.”

Interestingly, this silences him again for a while. For someone with usually such an expressive face, he is impressively inscrutable. It bothers her, the fact that she can’t read him.

She frets with the hem of her dress, uneasy.

He asks suddenly: “So it was all for appearances?”

“Huh?”

“Was everything you said—was it all just an act?”

She knits her eyebrows together. “I don’t know. I can’t remember everything I said.”

His lips straighten into a firm, frustrated line. “I guess I meant ask specifically,” he says, “if you were pretending when you told Prashant that stuff about me.” 

“What did I say?”

“You know, the stuff about being charming.” He clears his throat. “About being sweet.” He casts a lingering look at her while stopped at a light. “Did you mean it?”

This punches a shaky breath out of her chest. She watches his knuckles tighten around the steering wheel, once. The turn signal ticks loudly.

“Yeah,” she says faintly. “I did.”

He’s quiet.

Just a bit desperately, she tries, “You’re not gonna get a big ego about this, are you?”

This eases some of the tension. He sidelines a wry glance at her. “What makes you think that?”

“Oh, I don’t know. Maybe that extremely unfair and unrealistic story you told about how we met.”

“What was wrong with it?”

She scoffs. “Well, I certainly would never have _thrown myself at you_. I have enough pride to keep from doing that.”

“You said it yourself—it’s feminist.”

“Yeah, because I had to make it look feminist,” she says scornfully, “when we both know that is probably the least feminist way possible to say ‘desperate’.”

“Well, I didn’t see it that way when I was telling the story.”

“Liar. You totally did.”

He laughs. “Well, what would you have told them?”

She bites her lip, looks out the window. “I don’t know,” she says. She thinks about his arm slung around her chair, the way he had looked at her in her dress. “Maybe it was mutual. We just… were both really into each other after being friends for a while. And that was that.”

He pulls flawlessly to the curbside of her street and shifts the gear into park, which under normal circumstances would have been infuriating. But the air in the car is far too electric for this to be under normal circumstances.

The scent of his cologne near her is spicy. Dark and distinctly masculine. It’s overwhelming.

She wonders if the pretending ends, or just turns into something else. Something a little more dangerous. 

Boldly, she asks, “What would you have said about me?”

His hand freezes on the parking brake. “Huh?”

“What would you have said about me? If Prashant asked you what you liked about me? Hypothetically?”

She watches his tongue dart to wet his lips. He exhales slowly.

“Hypothetically?”

“Yes.”

“Hypothetically,” he begins, drawing out the syllables, “I think I would have said that you were also really confident.” He stops. “Like, you have maybe an undue level of confidence.”

Devi scoffs quietly. “My level of confidence is actually perfect. Like everything else about me.”

He chuckles lowly. “Right, yeah.” A pause. “And you’re smart. Quick. You notice things in some of my cases sometimes that are really crucial.”

She holds her breath. 

“I like that you’re funny. I like how you keep up with me and—you motivate me. You’re always challenging me, making sure that I’m putting out my best work.”

This time it’s her gravitating toward him, and she can’t stop herself from moving closer. She wonders, vaguely, if he knows what he’s telling her. If he knows he’s crossing into uncharted territory, if he knows that he can stop pretending. 

She wonders if he’s still pretending.

His voice is pitched low, husky. “I like how you’re so ruthless when we get into arguments or when you’re in court,” he says. His eyes fix on hers with a look that feels at once faraway and also deeply intimate, so intense that she looks down. They’re so close that she swears she can feel his breath on her skin. “I like how you blush scarlet when you get angry or annoyed. I like how your hair smells like lavender. And I _really_ like how you look in this dress.”

Devi’s eyes snap open and everything is in hyperfocus: the glossy-slick sheen of the moonlight on the sleek leather seats, the street lights casting the windows in a golden light, the startling juxtaposition of his previously playful demeanor with the way he’s looking at her now. With a start, she watches his gaze drag crudely down her body, pausing nearly imperceptibly at the sweetheart neckline of her dress, then down, down. She shifts forward, surreptitiously, and his gaze flits back to her breasts, then her eyes. 

The blue of his eyes are almost hungry, a little _feral_ , like he could devour her. 

Her breath catches. 

She’s never seen him look at her the way he’s watching her. She’s never seen _anyone_ look at her the way he is, not even her ex boyfriends or previous flings.

She wonders, for a moment, what it would be like to kiss him. To climb into his lap and unzip the dress that she knows he’s been staring at the whole night; to let his mouth, lips, tongue devour her like she wants him to. To fuck him in the driver’s seat.

She breathes in, sharply, enough for him to blink twice and lean back. To look back at her after he’s rearranged his expression and now everything is the same. 

Almost.

Devi opens her mouth, closes it, then teases half heartedly, “Well, it’s nice to know that you don’t hate me.”

He chokes out a strangled little laugh and runs his hand through his hair. 

“I don’t hate you, Devi,” he says. “Isn’t that obvious?”

The question hangs in the air between them.

“It’s getting late,” Devi observes out loud, to no one in particular.

He rubs his neck sheepishly. She watches his bicep flex. 

“Yeah,” he agrees. “It’s really—it’s dark out.”

“Thank you for coming with me to dinner. I know you were busy today.”

“It was no problem.”

“And I figure these things can be a hassle—”

“No, no, it wasn’t—”

“—and Prashant’s questions were a _lot_ , and I know the restaurant didn’t bring out vinegar for the bread and olive oil—”

“It was okay, really—”

“—but I really appreciate it,” she finishes, lamely, breathless. “I’m glad you came.”

She watches his cheeks dimple again. “I had a really good time with you,” he assures her, then quietly, “It was worth the hassle.”

She can’t help the smile across her face. She reaches for the car handle reluctantly. “Goodnight, Ben.”

He’s smiling back. “Goodnight, Devi.”

* * *

Her apartment is freezing that night.

Devi runs the shower as scorching hot as it can possibly go, strips naked and stands there, letting the water fry her nerve endings until she’s just pins and needles from the waist up. She watches the fog creep across her mirror until she can no longer see the outline of her body and her skin is just one hazy splotch. Then she washes her hair gratuitously, breathes in its scent, and makes a mental note to buy Target’s entire supply of lavender shampoo.

When she shuts off the water, her phone buzzes on the countertop insistently. Blankly, Devi reaches over and checks to find myriad texts from Kamala, all of which are gushing about how _the night was just fantastic_ and how she _loves how cute the two of you are as a couple_ and how she was _so very excited for the wedding,_ and _Ben will get along_ great _with all the groomsmen, won’t that be so fun?_

She closes her eyes and all she sees is cloudy, stormy blue: all over her eyes, her legs, her neck. 

Yeah, she has a gigantic, uncontrollable, fucking _humongous_ crush on Ben Gross. 

“Jesus Christ,” she finally says out loud to herself. “I am an adult woman.”

And because she is an adult woman, she opens up her laptop and takes her hard-earned money to buy the smallest, shortest possible dress she can find online to pack for Kamala’s wedding.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [my tumblr/shithole/etc](https://shakespeareans.co.vu/)


	3. Chapter 3

Kamala’s wedding takes place in a vineyard an hour away from Syracuse. 

It’s located in the middle of rolling hills somewhere, in a romantic little clearing surrounded by distant groves of pine. The thing that strikes her about it is the sheer size of the venue: leafy vines climbing down endless rows that stretch farther than she can see until it melts into the horizon, green hills just barely visible in the backdrop. The _bigness_ of the place makes her uneasy. 

All of this beauty feels—confrontational.

The other thing, the _contradictory_ thing, is that the room she’s sharing with Ben is not big. It’s not tiny, not exactly, but the unspoken tension between them feels like it’s taking up a lot of physical space, especially since they only exchanged perfunctory small talk and their typical quips and tried, with olympic strength, to avoid discussing what that happened on the night of the dinner on the drive up. 

And so far, up to this point, it’s been fine. As far as Devi is concerned, standing with Ben in the doorway of their shared hotel room, it’s going to continue to be fine, at least for a little while longer. 

Devi drops her bags to inspect the room. There’s a living room area, connected to a substantial bathroom and a bedroom. She admires the large windows, tests the sliding door, steps briefly onto their balcony, which has the same stunning view of the vineyard. When she steps back inside she turns and Ben’s standing quietly, frozen, so she follows his gaze and finally surveys the bedroom.

“Oh god,” Devi says. “Fuck.”

There’s one bed.

Her eyes flit furtively back to Ben’s face, which is pale with shock. 

He echoes her thoughts: “There’s one bed.”

“Yes.”

“Because we’re supposed to be in a relationship together.” He swallows visibly, thickly. “Because we would be spending nights together.”

The thought is almost too much to handle. For a brief moment, she’s worried of being transparent, like maybe Ben can read the panic on her face. Like he knows what she’s been thinking about for the last few weeks.

She feigns nonchalance. “Yeah,” she says. “Probably.”

He’s still holding his bags, knuckles white around his duffel. “Well,” he says slowly, “what now?”

It’s a good question—a _fair_ question. She tries to think, but her head doesn't quite catch up to her mouth.

Devi says out loud, “I mean, it’s not like we can sleep in the same bed…” 

She trails off, instantly regretting the sentence the second it leaves her mouth. Ben’s face is as scarlet as her face feels. 

He laughs nervously. “Now that would be a whole other HR disaster.”

Her dignity is probably unsalvageable, so she blows past it. “I can fix this. I can call the lobby, and maybe they can upgrade us to a room with two beds,” she stammers. “Or, look, I’ll just book another room. I’m sure they have one, or at least, like, a shack in the vineyard.”

He’s on his feet now, searching the room. “Wait, it’s fine. Hang on.”

“I’ll sleep in the shed. Or the hallway! Or just the floor, if we have no other options—”

“Look! Devi, look, it’s fine.” He’s in the living room now, throwing off the cushions from the couch and fiddling uselessly with a handle. “No it’s—stop, it’s okay, I’ve got it. Look, it’s a pull out bed.”

Sure enough, another tug at the handle springs open a squeaky mattress. It’s small and pathetic looking, but it doesn’t stop the relief from flooding her senses. 

Ben stands, breathing hard and examining his handiwork. “I’ll take the pull out.”

“Are you sure?” Devi protests weakly. “I mean, I can take the couch, I’m smaller than you are and, honestly, this was _my_ fault, _I_ dragged you here—”

“Devi, chill,” he interrupts. “You’re good. I’ll sleep here this weekend. It’s a great size.”

“Yeah, because you’re freakishly short,” she says without malice.

She doesn’t mean it, obviously, but sometimes the jokes—the _routine_ —makes it easier to breathe.

“I changed my mind. I would really appreciate it if you slept in the pull out bed.”

She throws a pillow at him. He catches it deftly and grins at her.

* * *

The groomsmen and bridesmaids are going to be paired by height. 

Devi learns this while standing gingerly next to Kamala’s gaggle of neuroscientist friends. They don’t make any effort to engage her in their conversation, which is okay. It’s preferable, really: she’s awesome at small talk but she truly, completely despises it.

The only relief to the agonizing awkwardness is Ben sitting a few yards away in the empty chairs, waiting for her to finish the rehearsal ceremony. While the bridal party dawdles about, listening for instructions, he sits in the sea of white fold-out chairs and taps idly on his phone, looking up to make a face at Devi every so often. 

It’s a comfort, she realizes. His presence comforts her.

The groomsmen and bridesmaids have finally finished lining up by height, and Devi fidgets as Kamala and Prashant stand back to study them.

“Okay,” Prashant is saying, hands on hips, “we’re going to have to pair two bridesmaids to one, we’ll put Samantha with Collin…”

Without meaning to, Devi’s mind wanders back to Ben in the audience. Since they divided up the contents of their shared hotel room that morning, he had been in rare form, the most amiable and agreeable she had ever seen him. Complaints and insults had hit a new minimum. Even now, he’s relaxed and unbothered in his spot, his shoulders slouched back into his seat. Laid back would never be a adjective that she would use to describe him, but at the surface level he certainly looks like it.

They still haven’t discussed the incident in the car. But, she rationalizes, it’s fine. She can keep putting it off until a little later. Maybe after the rehearsal when they’re finally alone, preferably in close quarters, standing near enough for him to smell the lavender in her hair—

“Devi,” Kamala calls out, sweeping through the line, “you’ll be walking down with Paxton.”

Devi startles at the sound of her name. When she turns she’s face to face with someone who physically knocks the breath out of her.

“Oh!” she squeaks, because there’s something about this person that’s _familiar_. 

“Hi,” says the person, whom she can only assume is Paxton. He peers at her. “You good?”

She realizes in that moment, violently disoriented, that he reminds her of every guy that had ever blown her off for breakfast, each one of her dark-haired, kind-eyed flings. 

Even the way he has one hand shoved in his pocket, his shoulders halfway to his ears, reminds Devi of the low maintenance of a right-swipe on Tinder. Like he would pay for her subpar gnocchi at a sticky little Italian place and talk about his liberal arts degree, like he would take her back to his tiny two-bedroom afterward for a cheap fuck that takes 20 minutes and one condom. Like she wouldn’t be mad when he doesn’t text her back the next day.

On a purely objective, historical basis, this guy is exactly her type.

“I’m Paxton,” he says unnecessarily. “Devi, is it?”

“Mhm,” she says.

“Funny how we got paired up, huh?” 

She wants to respond, _not really, it isn’t that funny, it’s really kind of a height thing_ , but it’s the implicit connotations of the sentence that stop her—the casual brush of his hand on her arm, the heavy-lidded hazel eyes on her mouth. He’s so blatant about his interest in her it feels almost criminal.

From behind him, Ben’s mouth is open, phone forgotten in his hand, drinking in the situation. His eyes are wide and the space between his eyebrows closes and for some reason it excites her. The way he’s staring at her is fascinating.

Faced with the reactions of two different men, she realizes that there’s something to be said about distractions. More specifically the fact that there are two very distinct _categories_ of distractions, and how examples of the two categories are both staring at her, attempting to gauge her next expression for very different reasons.

“Listen,” this guy— _Paxton_ —is saying to her now, “I’ve been getting lost a lot since I arrived, maybe I could have your number if I can’t find my way around here?”

She doesn’t know exactly what it is: maybe it’s the familiarity of the motions, or the pent up exhaustion from constantly being in emotional limbo with someone she has a huge crush on—or maybe just the fact that someone is making it so fucking _easy_ for her, for once—but before she knows what’s she’s doing, she hands over her phone wordlessly. 

Paxton’s gaze rakes over her, alarmingly indiscreet. His smile is smooth and purposeful and she feels a little sick. 

She’s never understood how someone could physically feel someone’s eyes on them, but she finally understands in this moment because Ben’s gaze is _hot_ , scorching her skin, burning her periphery.

Devi has a feeling that she doesn’t quite know what she’s getting herself into.

* * *

They don’t mention it when they go back to the hotel room. 

At least, Ben doesn’t mention it, because unfortunately for Devi he’s a _gentleman_ who is regrettably, _exceptionally_ attuned to possible tension points that may or may not have anything to do with hot single men who happen to introduce themselves and flirt with unsuspecting women. He doesn’t mention it from the chilly walk back to their room to when Devi mumbles about needing to take a shower. 

He even has the courtesy to excuse himself to the balcony to drink beers when she exits the bathroom so as not to catch her wrapped only in a towel. 

Devi stands by herself, staring at his slouched figure outside, her legs dripping water down to the scratchy carpeting. The disappointment of being by herself in their room surprises her, stings more than she expects. Truthfully, she wants him to do more than mention it—she wants him to demand what this new factor means for their fake dating arrangement, for him to reveal unbidden emotion at the thought of it.

Shaking herself out of her thoughts, she quickly throws on a sweater and shorts and opens the sliding doors to join Ben outside. The sleek wood underneath her bare feet is freezing and the night air is static, tranquil, and she realizes, belatedly, that her shorts are too short for a cold night, or for standing next to someone she is deeply attracted to, or perhaps both at once.

Unaware of Devi’s inner turmoil, Ben pushes the door closed behind her and holds out a glass bottle. It’s sweating condensation in lengthy, thin drips. “I stole it from downstairs,” he tells her.

She accepts wordlessly and takes a long, greedy gulp. It’s unpleasantly sour, too aromatic. Aggressive. She’s never really liked the taste of beer. 

For a while, they drink in silence. Devi arranges her body into as casual a pose she can manage while sneaking furtive glances at his side profile, his posture, the way his forearms press against the railing. He’s still got on his shiny, gigantic watch and that salmon button down shirt, except the shirt is messy, untucked, the sleeves loosened and shoved up to his elbows. 

The air is tense. Kinetic. Unexpectedly stifling for such a cold night.

After wrestling with what to say to break the silence, Devi finally comes up with: “You look like an asshole in that shirt.”

This coaxes a smile out of him. “I like this shirt,” he counters defensively.

“It’s just—you look like you have a _trust fund_.”

“It’s Ralph Lauren.”

“And that's significant because...?”

“I don’t know,” he admits. “But it’s impressive that your fake boyfriend knows name brands, right?”

Devi grins back, helpless and shy. There’s something about that word when he says it— _boyfriend_ —that makes her giddy, sets her ablaze inside, makes it difficult for her to tear her gaze away from the way his lips attach to the mouth of the bottle, despite that pesky qualifier— _fake_. 

He’s her _fake_ boyfriend. 

“Your hair smells good,” he notes placidly. “Lavender shampoo?”

She freezes. 

Ben lifts the bottle to his lips again calmly, and she knows he’s said it on purpose. She knows he remembers that night in her car and his confessions and how dangerously electric that moment was. His casual audacity, so nonchalant and flippant, squeezes out an involuntary choked, high sound from her throat.

“I washed my hair last night,” she says tightly. 

He nods, a tiny, almost imperceptible movement. 

“It smells good.”

“Thanks.”

“It’s kind of a crowd pleaser, yeah?”

Devi squints at him, trying to read him. His normally expressive blue eyes are black at night, and the shadows paint an utterly impassive appearance across the roundness of his face. 

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“Well, that groomsmen seemed really interested in it.” A pause, perfectly calculated. “What’s his name? Paxton?”

Well.

Her heart beats loudly in her ears.

She must be so stupid, so unbelievably _delusional_ to believe that Ben Gross might be jealous or that he might want her, but it’s the first thought to flit across her mind. The second, third, and fourth remind her of how fucking crazy it would be for that to be true, how cold her legs are, how warm the beer is in her chest on the way down.

Her fifth thought goes back to her unreasonable despondency at Ben’s refusal to comment on her interaction with Paxton, and, with reference to that thought, it’s impossible to tell whether this moment feels more gratifying or vexing.

“I think that was it,” Devi replies as steadily as she can, but her head is groggy in a way that she can’t blame entirely on the alcohol. “He was—” she thinks about her next word— “friendly.”

“I mean, he was totally hitting on you,” Ben observes. “He gave you his number, right?”

She sniffs. “Yeah.”

“And have you texted him?”

She hadn’t, wasn’t even planning on giving it another glance, but the turn of the conversation feels so much like a trap that she scoffs half heartedly and wipes her mouth with the back of her hand, looking away. “Jealous, Gross?”

Ben’s response is so enviously easy that it feels indifferent, practiced. A little mean. “I just want us to be on the same page.”

“Okay, sure.”

“I’m just saying that if you have any overnight guests, you can put a sock on the doorknob. Something like that. Or if you sleep elsewhere,” he gestures lightly with his bottle, “just text me. No big deal.”

 _If only he knew_ , Devi thinks wildly, uncontrollably to herself. 

Maybe wanting him to mention Paxton was the wrong move. She can feel her temper flaring up but isn’t entirely sure why. She curls her toes into the wooden floorboards and wills the cold to seep in through her toes, to cool her down.

“I haven’t met anyone else so far,” she says evenly, “that I would be interested in inviting to our room. As an overnight guest.”

“If you’re worried about blowing our cover, you won’t.” He pushes up his sleeves in a sharp movement that feels tense. “After all, this is just to pretend, right? For Kamala?”

“That doesn’t mean I’m gonna jump some rando who hit on me.”

“No, but I didn’t see you delete his number,” he responds lightly. “And you obviously know that real boyfriends would have a problem with that kind of thing.”

Slick. That was slick and she suspects, _knows_ , in fact, if she’s being honest to the sinking feeling in her gut, that they’re both aware of the maneuver he’d pulled, and she’s ashamed and hurt and even angry at him for indirectly pointing out the blurred lines of their relationship. She can feel the blush creeping up her cheeks, hot against the cool night air, and when she opens her mouth she struggles to find words. She bites back most of them, because he’s right. 

At the end of the day, keeping him at arm’s length is supposed to be smart. Sensible. Something she had forgotten to do in the past week. 

He fits into one of the categories of distraction, after all, and decidedly a bad one at that, because the good kind doesn’t require paperwork from HR or make her want to tear her hair out with lust and/or frustration. The good kind wouldn’t be the only thing she could think about at night when she’s trying to sleep.

“I guess,” she answers, icily. “But even in fake relationships I don’t cheat.”

His gaze focuses on hers, and the fact that his expression is so deliberately detached and guarded—it pulls at her. It _irks_.

It makes her furious.

“Right,” he grits out finally, twiddling with the neck of his bottle. “Right.”

She exhales, slowly. 

* * *

The dress she bought, she realizes with dread, is a double edged sword.

* * *

It’s a bit too short on her body on the day of the rehearsal dinner.

When she tried it on weeks ago, fresh out of the package, in her apartment at one in the morning while drunk on margarita mix, it had been perfect. It wasn’t exactly bodycon, but it was close enough for sure. Hugged her curves perfectly, cinched in her waist, dipped just low enough so that there was a _tasteful_ amount of cleavage showing. There had been no issue with the fact that it stopped at her upper thigh, just below her ass. But now—

Now it’s a _problem_. Sort of.

Devi’s not exactly sure what it is when she sees the emotions flit through Ben’s face as she steps out of their bathroom in the dress. He’s never been good about hiding his reactions, she thinks smugly, as his face goes slack and his wide blue eyes flicker from shock to wariness to something extremely, dangerously close to lust, before finally settling on exasperation. His jaw tightens before looking away, and suddenly he’s moving toward the door and chattering to no one in particular that _you shouldn’t waste time trying to find the room key_ and _your purse is right here_ and _are you ready to go yet?_

And she knows for certain that Ben has noticed Paxton’s appreciative gaze on her body when they enter the tent. She knows by the way Ben hovers next to her the entire night with his hand light on her elbow, her waist, finding numerous excuses to _touch her_ and _hold her hand_ , which, she notes spitefully, is hypocritical and absolutely infuriating and didn’t he want to fucking talk about blurred lines so badly just one night ago?

So, yeah, Devi knows that the dress is bothering him. Riling him up. And she’s glad. After all, she is decidedly angry with him for the stupid, ambiguous boundaries he had decided to define and the fact that this dress is making him forget about them.

She contemplates texting Paxton out of spite, right where Ben can see it, but she can’t bring herself to do it, and when she looks up from her phone Ben is staring at her, his eyes climbing up to where the peachy pink fabric of her dress meets her skin on her leg. His face is flushed a bright, tell-tale red. 

The sharp, delicious thrill of pleasure from the thought of Ben checking her out is difficult to ignore; the sneaking realization that this has occurred multiple times and maybe even become a _trend_ is even more difficult to push away. She’s supposed to be mad at him, she remembers, but the thought leaves her head immediately when he gives her a look that she knows is supposed to be scornful, but it isn’t. It’s boyish and tempting and magnetic.

She doesn’t look away. She catches her bottom lip under her teeth slyly and she hears him exhale, the breath long and _hot_.

She’s not really angry with him.

And they’re both kind of terrible at pretending.

* * *

Just like the last incident, they don’t talk about it when they get back to their room. Ben shuts the sliding door between their rooms with a bang, and then takes a suspiciously long shower, which Devi desperately keeps herself from thinking too much about.

There’s a lot that she keeps herself from thinking about that night. She tries not to wonder whether or not they’re still in a fight, or if they were in one in the first place. She tries not to measure the effects of a salaciously short dress. Most of all, she tries not to contemplate the astronomical magnitude of sexual frustration that a single night can cause.

* * *

Despite a night of tossing and turning, Devi wakes up astonishingly, uncharacteristically early on the day of the wedding, full of an energy that she’s certain is mostly second-hand anxiety for Kamala. She rummages through their bags as silently as possible to find food, chokes down one of Ben’s disgusting protein bars for sustenance, and tiptoes around Ben’s pull out bed to leave their room. 

Before she closes the door behind her she sneaks one look at Ben sleeping and it strikes her how peaceful he looks. His skin is ivory and soft in the dim light filtering in through the door and his mouth is slightly open. His arms are splayed across the empty side of the tiny bed and Devi imagines, for a split second, herself in that spot, under his arms. The image only serves to heighten her nervous energy. Alarmed at this change and at herself for being creepy, she turns away and shuts the door with a shaky exhale.

It’s dark outside. The sun peeks out from over the mountains, but not by much. She spends an hour pacing around the vineyard by herself outside, feeling inexplicably jittery and skittish, and tries hopelessly to forget about the complicated nature of her relationship-not-relationship. When she’s called to help out with logistics and getting ready, she channels as much of that energy as humanly possible into organizing tip envelopes and arranging the seating cards into perfect lines on the dinner tables and generally anything else in her limited agency to make sure that Kamala has the perfect wedding.

Around an hour after noon, when she is laboriously winging eyeliner on a painfully chatty bridesmaid, her phone buzzes with a text from Ben: 

_Hey I’m outside your dressing room can I see you?_

Devi hesitates, her eyeliner tip hovering over the bridesmaid’s face. The lack of detail of the text scares her, especially since she and Ben hadn’t talked about any of the events that had conspired the day before, and her stomach turns at the thought of eminent rejection, especially one delivered with condoling blue eyes—

Today is really far too important a day to get her heart broken. Or at least stomped on a little bit.

The bridesmaid pins a mildly irritated look at Devi, one that’s a bit too condescending and pointed, and asks, “Your boyfriend?”

Kamala, who is having her hair braided back with rose buds into an intricate swirl, smiles broadly at Devi and makes a gentle, shooing motion with a french tipped hand. She had been her same serene, cheery self the entire day, and with every hour she had somehow gotten calmer and calmer. “Is Ben here? Tell him I say hello.”

Devi realizes with an inward sigh that it would be rude—or worse, suspicious—to reject explicitly expressed permission to go see her fake boyfriend. 

“I will do that,” she mumbles, resigned, and picks herself off of her chair. 

She doesn’t expect to be surprised by Ben’s appearance at this point, but when she opens the door she is physically taken aback by how he looks. He’s dressed natty and sharp in a crisp button down and patently expensive navy jacket and trousers. Gold cufflinks peek out from under his jacket sleeves, and a matching gold tie clip gleams on his chest, sharp and eye-catching on his black tie. 

He looks like a jackass and a prick and a rich, arrogant bastard. It’s so unfairly attractive that she doesn’t even remember what had happened the night before.

“Ben,” she breathes. “I—what’s up?”

Something inside Devi blooms when she notices that he’s staring right back at her, his mouth slightly ajar as he takes in her image. Candidly, she feels a little foolish, barefoot and dressed only in a silky shell-pink robe, hair done and makeup applied in copious amounts of blush and matte lipstick, but the way he’s staring at her makes her feel precious. She pulls the silk closer around her and melts inwardly as she notices his awed gaze at the flower crown braided into her hair.

Then she notices the protein bars in his fist and barks out a surprised laugh.

“What the hell are these?”

That snaps him out of it. He rubs his neck, bashful. 

“I thought you would be hungry. You didn’t have lunch.”

The feeling blooms even more ( _he brought her food, he worries about her eating habits, he cares about her he cares about her he cares about her_ ). Pleased and happy, she can feel her cheeks warming.

“I don’t understand how someone can be so unaware of the fact that protein bars are revolting,” she tells him.

“They’re not!”

“I won’t eat it.”

He huffs, affronted. “I saw a wrapper on the floor this morning next to your bed.”

“It was bad.”

“But you _ate one_.”

“I regret what I did,” she says, “and now I would rather starve.”

They spend a minute grinning at each other, ridiculous and helpless, basking in the familiarity of their banter.

“Can we go back to normal?” Devi blurts out. “Before all the stuff from last night?”

He winces in front of her.

“Look, it was my fault.” He says it quickly in one breath, like the sight of her is taking it out of him physically. “It’s really—it was really stupid for me to bring all of that up. The stuff with Paxton.”

She shakes her head. “It wasn’t stupid.”

“It really wasn’t my business, and I went and made everything weird—”

“Don’t be sorry, I’m serious.”

“But,” he falters. “I feel bad about it.”

“Well, don’t. I don’t want you to.”

This elicits a petulant noise from him that sounds like a _hmph_. “Bossy.”

“You love it.”

Ben smiles at the ground and—god, she can’t fucking help how much she wants to touch the dimples on his face.

“I should probably head back inside,” she says reluctantly, then as breezily as possible, “Any last words? Before you never see me again?”

He looks thoughtful.

“You look like a fairy.”

“A fairy,” she repeats.

He steps closer to her and touches a flower in her hair, so lightly that she doesn’t feel it. His blue eyes are bright and clear and heart-wrenchingly fond, and his mouth is quirked up almost absently.

“A fairy,” he confirms. “Yeah.”

* * *

Obviously the ceremony is gorgeous.

Paxton is waiting for her behind the guests. She gingerly takes his offered arm as they walk down the aisle and she keeps her vision trained on the altar while they proceed past the other guests, but the sky is cloudless and the breeze manages not to blow her dress through her legs and she doesn’t trip a single time in her heels when they walk in the grass. She counts it as a net positive.

All of the tension disappears when Kamala’s silhouette appears behind the guests. An audible gasp echoes through the standing audience when they see Kamala glide down the aisle, and Devi the way Prashant is staring at Kamala is so intimate that it’s hard to watch: reverent, astonished, his eyes shiny and amazed. 

There’s a light, floating feeling in Devi’s chest as she watches Kamala step onto the altar with Prashant, and the feeling _pinches_ , lingers when they join hands. As they recite their vows to each other, Devi can’t help but wonder— _reevaluate_ the thing with Ben and distractions. Because the way Prashant moves to wipe a tear from Kamala’s cheek, the way they’re staring at each other, the sense of _poignancy_ and _significance_ in their vows that describe friendship and love and throwing oneself wholeheartedly into a commitment, which is a word that sounds awfully similar to _arrangement—_

Devi can’t help it anymore. Her traitorous gaze betrays her and attaches to Ben’s face, but he’s already staring at her, his eyes wistful and stunned. His mouth tugs into a slow, hopeful grin. 

To hell with distractions—Ben Gross isn’t one. Distractions don’t feel this real. 

* * *

The last dance of the night is a slow song.

It’s something she’s sure she’s heard on the radio before, a catchy, nostalgic tune that she finds herself humming along to subconsciously. Everyone is partnering up and drifting onto the floor; Ben looks at her from his seat beside her, a lingering flash of blue eyes, and he doesn’t even have to ask.

It goes without saying, of course, that she’ll dance with him.

She lets him lead her onto the floor, and then he sweeps her close to him. His hand is big around hers, and he seems unconcerned with how clammy her palm is, clasping her hand tightly in a calloused grip. Her heartbeat thrums close to his skin; she wonders if he can feel her pulse stutter when he presses his other hand to the open back of her dress.

It’s not normal, but it feels normal. The pretending is second nature at this point.

“Are you having a good time?” he asks her.

“Honestly? I’m fucking sick of being a bridesmaid,” she admits. “So far eight people have asked me where the bathrooms are and I think Kamala’s scientist friends are talking shit about me.”

“Poor thing,” Ben jokes, spinning her once before his hand is on her waist again. 

It’s comfortable now, like his hand belongs there.

“I miss the anonymity of being a normal wedding-goer,” she muses. “I miss being able to get drunk without having to worry about keeping up appearances.”

“That doesn’t seem like it’s stopping you now.”

He’s referring to the flutes of champagne she had gulped down during the reception in long, ravenous drinks. He had cut her off around an hour ago.

She’s only a little buzzed at the moment. Maybe a bit more than a little, but certainly not enough to admit that he’s right.

“Shut up. I’m barely tipsy.”

“Uh huh.”

“I’m a heavyweight. I could outdrink you, easy.”

She stumbles when he twirls her again.

“Okay, so maybe I’m a little bit drunk,” she finally concedes.

He laughs quietly, and when she meets his gaze again his eyes are breathtakingly blue, the kind of sky-blue that is cloudless and certain. The way he’s looking at her is unwavering. Tender. Overwhelmingly _fond_. And there’s that feeling, like on that first night at his ex’s wedding, and she can’t breathe. 

She sways, and he steadies her, pulling her flush against him by hooking his hand around her waist. They’re chest to chest now, nose to nose, so close that the proximity feels visceral and pretty damn close to _electric_.

“I’m really glad you invited me to come with you,” he says.

“I knew you would be grateful,” she replies.

“I’ll let you have this one.”

“You’d better.”

His hand is firm on her waist, possessive. 

“I just wanted to say that I’ve had a really good time,” he says, “throughout this whole fake dating thing. Wedding date stuff.”

“You _are_ having a good time,” she corrects. “Present tense.”

“I _am_ having a good time,” he repeats softly.

Devi laughs once, sharply, abruptly. The momentum of the laugh sends her head to his shoulder. “This is weird,” she says. 

“What is?”

“This just feels kind of like I’m getting broken up with.”

He exhales out a puff of air that sounds at once amused and perplexed. 

“I don’t know what you mean by that.”

“I mean, at some point we’re gonna have to break up. In terms of appearances, right?”

She swears she can feel his heartbeat pounding against her own fingers. 

“I guess that’s true,” he answers, “technically speaking.”

“And obviously you’re going to be devastated.”

“I’ll be so heartbroken that you can’t show me off at weddings anymore,” he agrees.

Devi laughs again wryly despite herself, and tucks her head deeper into his chest. “I mean,” she says, trying to condense her unbridled adoration and lust and appreciation into nonchalant, glib vaguery, “I just—I guess I wish this didn’t have to end so soon.”

He sighs faintly. It’s hot against her ear. “Me too.”

“You’re not entirely horrible.”

“Gee, thanks.”

“And sometimes you can be funny.”

She can feel his chest contract again in that huff of amusement. “Are you sure you’re not drunk, Devi?”

She lifts her head to look at him fully, and his gaze is searing, searching and curious and _hopeful_ , like he’s looking for her to say something, a specific affirming phrase that could be the right answer. 

“Why do you assume that I’m drunk when I say nice things to you?” she asks instead of answering.

“I just don’t know when we’re pretending,” he says quietly, like a confession. 

“I’m not pretending.”

He inhales sharply, quietly. They’re quiet again, for a brief, heart fluttering moment.

“Did I tell you that I think you look really pretty tonight?” he asks her. 

His voice is unsteady, but his expression is soft and terribly, impossibly affectionate. She knows the question is rhetorical. 

She answers anyway. “Only that I look like a fairy.”

“I like not pretending,” he says in lieu of a reply. 

His eyes are so sincere that it is so profoundly, genuinely painful to keep herself from kissing him.

She lets her chin fall back against his shoulder, and this time she can feel his cheek pressed against the side of her head. He sways with her, wordlessly, holding her close to him until the last notes of the song fade out.

* * *

When Ben lets go of her after the dance his hand still lingers on her waist. Devi knows what he’s about to ask before he opens his mouth to speak.

His voice cracks a little when he says it: “What now?”

“I’m going to go say goodnight to some of the guests,” she says.

His gaze searches her face, her mouth, her eyes. 

“You know where to find me,” he says finally. 

* * *

Devi bumps face to face into Paxton again on her way out. 

“We have to stop meeting like this,” he jokes. 

She stumbles back, dazed. 

As always, his appearance brings a confusing blend of discomfort and familiarity. Just from impressions, she can sense the investment he had put into his disorderly appearance. There seems to be a purpose to his bow tie and his tousled dark hair. She knows this from experience, of course.

“Oh, Paxton,” she says. “Ha. Yeah.”

“I’m glad I caught you.”

“I was just on my way out,” she provides unnecessarily, jabbing a thumb at the exit. 

“Oh. That’s cool.”

She musters a bright smile. “Yup. Yeah.” There’s obviously no backup for this situation, but she still looks around wildly. “Alright, well, good seeing ya.”

“Wait.” He stops her with a loose touch of his hand. “If you don’t mind me asking… I saw you dancing with someone.” He sucks in a breath. “Are you with him? Are you guys together?”

Devi tries not to fidget while thinking of something adequate to say. A binary yes or no would be wrong.

“It’s… complicated.”

“It’s complicated,” she hears him echo.

“We work together, is the thing,” she adds before she can stop herself.

“Is that all?”

She doesn’t answer.

“He seems really attracted to you.” Paxton quirks an eyebrow at her. “It doesn’t seem that complicated to me.”

She musters a polite smile for him.

“If you don’t mind me saying this,” he offers, “I think you look really great tonight.” 

“Thanks. You look nice too.”

She can see his Adam's apple bob as silence hangs between them. He’s searching for words, clearly, and Devi can’t help her feeling of impatience. 

Frankly, it’s not fair to him. He seems well-meaning and respectful, but silently all she can think about are boys sitting on pullout beds and how this conversation feels too long and how her room key is in the third pocket in the wallet component of her purse. 

“I got too nervous tonight. I should have asked you to dance,” Paxton finally says. 

Surprised by the frankness of this confession, she looks at him askance. 

“You didn’t, though,” she reminds him, because it’s the only thing she can think of to say.

“I didn’t,” he concedes, “which was dumb of me.”

She’s speechless. 

“Listen, I think you’re really cool,” he says plainly. “Do you want to get out of here?”

In another world, Devi would say yes. And the thing is, in this world, she could also say yes, and she knows that Ben would let her. She knows with certainty that Ben would find some other place to sleep and let her fuck this stranger for the routine 20 minutes with one condom and let himself get hurt, but the thought of hurting Ben is unbearable. 

She really can’t keep him waiting any longer.

A sudden, strong gust blows through the park and she can feel gooseflesh prickling up her arms. She looks away and holds her arms tightly. 

“Are you cold?” Paxton reaches out and touches her arm. “Whoa, you’ve got goosebumps.”

She exhales on a stilted laugh. “Yeah, I guess I’m a bit chilly.”

“Do you want my jacket?”

He’s closer than she expects when she turns to meet his gaze, and up close he is definitely as good-looking as she thought. But what stops her are his eyes, which are dreamy. Luminescent. Almost transparent, shockingly bright, a kaleidoscope of color—emerald-green mottled with amber, orange, caramel.

She smiles at him softly, apologetically. “I think I’m okay.”

* * *

She’s always been more of a fan of blue eyes, is the thing.

* * *

Their hotel room is dark when Devi enters, save for the single lamp next to the pull out bed, buzzing quietly and casting a weak, orange glow on Ben’s shadowy back.

She kicks off her heels. Ben’s head swivels to acknowledge her when the door clicks closed behind her.

“Devi,” he says. His voice is scratchy and low.

She crosses the room to sit next to him. He’s unbuttoned his dress shirt to reveal the undershirt beneath it; he’s still wearing his slacks. The blanket of his bed is thin under her legs, rumpled and unmade. It makes her feel like she’s violating some part of his privacy by sitting on a bed that looks like this with how nakedly intimate it feels to see him here.

“What are you doing with just this lamp on?” she asks him awkwardly, a little unsure of how to start the conversation with him.

He gives her a wry look. “I like mood lighting. Gives things a really singular feel to them.”

“You’re so dramatic.”

“So I’ve heard.”

She bounces, once. The mattress springs under her squeak woefully. 

“Sorry again that I cast you away to sleep here.”

“You don’t have to be sorry for anything.”

She meets his eyes, and is suddenly awash with a comforting familiarity of his gaze. The dim lighting drains his eyes of brilliant color, and the way he’s looking at her is soft. Like she’s the only other person in the world, and in the static calm of their room it certainly feels like it. 

“So how was the party after I left?”

“It was good. Empty.” Devi clears her throat. “Um, I bumped into someone. While I was down there.”

Ben nods, robotic. “Oh, sure.”

“Paxton asked me to leave the reception with him,” she says.

It’s not the best way to start the conversation. Ben visibly tenses in front of her. “Oh?”

Devi can’t go back and fix what she said, so explaining is her only option. “He was telling me about how he liked me. He wanted to ask me to dance with him. " Her rambling starts to pick up speed and it’s the nerves, the anxiety. It’s difficult to slow down. “And then he asked him to come with me to his room, and then I got cold, and he was offering his sports coat to me like you did that night, do you remember? At Shira’s wedding? It was like an epiphany, or something.” 

He’s silent, then he knits his eyebrows together. 

“What?”

She barrels over his confusion. The words are gushing out of her like a broken dam. “I said no—I literally, physically couldn’t say yes—and then I came here, because I realized that I want something real. I realized I wanted that coat to be yours—”

“Devi—”

“—and I had this whole idea of being a career woman, like I didn’t have time for distractions, like I somehow couldn’t date you for real because I didn’t have time? But that’s so _bullshit,_ because I care so much about you, what you think, your opinion—”

“Devi.”

“—you’re _not_ a distraction. You’re not, even though I can’t stop thinking about you. _God,_ sometimes I feel like I’m going crazy—”

“ _Devi_ ,” he interrupts, his tone somehow both hushed and emphatic. “Tell me what you want.”

For the first time in a while, she knows how to answer.

She closes her eyes, sighs, “I just want to stop pretending with you from now on.”

The set of his jaw is regal and resolute. His face, cast with shadows, is unbearably handsome. 

“Then let’s stop pretending,” he responds. 

Her heart hammers hard and fast in her chest, loud in her palm as she places her hand close to his, touching the tips of her fingers to his pinky. 

He slowly twines his fingers through hers. 

“I want to kiss you,” she says plaintively, at once overcome with the sensation of nakedness and vulnerability. “Would you please kiss me?”

He’s quiet, and for a moment she’s reminded of who he is: constantly on high alert, disciplined, cautious to a fault. She doesn’t know what to do with the embarrassingly intense fondness and impatience that this observation provokes—she wants, so badly, to fast forward past the calculating and the pining, to feel what his mouth is like against her own.

“Are you drunk?” he asks carefully. 

The vulnerability and the fondness is too much to handle and the pressure of it dissipates in a second. She exhales, feigning exasperation. “How many times are you going to ask me that in a night?”

He ducks his head, his chin on his chest.

“It’s a good line,” she teases. “It’s working on me for sure.”

“Devi, I just wanted to make sure,” he interrupts, “in case I am making a very bad decision.” His eyes search hers. “I want to make sure this is real.”

She doesn’t even realize how close he is until his breath fans over her skin, sweet and warm. She looks up at him through her eyelashes, watches his pupils dilate and the color of his irises darken until she’s drowning in blue.

He is too careful, she thinks to herself. Too gentle. Too good to her.

She doesn’t bother telling him that she’s not actually drunk. She’s barely buzzed anymore, but that’s not the point.

“I think we both know,” she says haltingly, pausing to find that certainty in his gaze from before, “that alcohol doesn’t change that fact that I want you to kiss me.”

His shoulders are square to her body, and he’s released her hand to cup her face. She holds her breath when she notices the intensity of the way he studies her: it’s still hesitant but it’s—steady. Unflinching. 

“Okay,” he says.

The kiss is soft at first, careful, restrained, and tastes like champagne and unrequited yearning and _is this okay?_ She swings her arms around his shoulders, tilts her head and tells him, whispers _yes this is okay_ , whimpers when he scrapes her bottom lip with his teeth.

She swings a leg across him and now she’s straddling him, grinding against him, and Ben’s slacks seem like far too much clothing. His mouth is so hot against hers, and at once it’s like a dam has broken—it’s less gentle and more tongue and teeth—and his hands are _everywhere_ , in her hair, on her back, on her ass. He’s already hard against her leg.

“Is this good?” he says against her mouth. For the first time tonight he sounds _nervous_ , and it’s so endearing that she just laughs and nods in reply.

As the kiss deepens his fingers finally curl in between the juncture of her thighs oh-so-slowly and she kisses him harder, trying to beg him with her tongue to yank aside her underwear and put his fingers in her cunt. He’s just as enthusiastic as she is, his hand snaking up her back and threading through the crown of her hairline to hold her and he sweeps her hair back, tucks it behind her ear and watches her with _that look_ , like she’s beautiful, _delicate_ , and _oh, fucking god_ his other hand is finally on her clit and she arches into him, gasps into his mouth when he rubs _hard_ and— 

Maybe this pull-out bed is big enough for the both of them.

* * *

The room that Devi wakes up in the next morning is yellow. 

That’s the first thing she registers the next morning, actually. It’s the curtains, she figures, or maybe the lack of direct sunlight shining into this part of their room, but she doesn’t mind it. It’s hazy and luminescent and gold. Romantic.

The second thing she registers is that she’s naked in Ben’s pull out bed. She figures she’ll circle back to that one.

The third thing is Ben’s figure across the room. He’s shaving. She watches him through the open door of the bathroom and admires his body bent over the sink, shirtless, his eyes narrowed to study his side profile in the mirror. He has one elbow up and his opposite hand holds his face to the side. It’s such a distinctly masculine, private scene—watching him makes her feel domestic. 

It also brings back the events from last night. Devi leans back against her pillow and breathes out, basking in the afterglow of a good night of sex, and tries to ignore the gnawing sensation of restlessness for now. She lets herself touch her mouth in memory of the night before. She can allow herself some small luxuries, after all, before facing reality.

So she lazes in the sheets for a while longer, watches the muscles in Ben’s back flex deliciously, and once the urge to go talk to him overwhelms her desire to lay back in this surprisingly comfortable bed, she scans the ground for clothes. His dress shirt is still crumpled on the floor, but it’s cool on her shoulders and the ragged ends of the curtails are long enough for her to go bottomless.

She pads over to their bathroom and wordlessly stands next to him in the mirror, watching him finish shaving the last of the beard on his chin. She feels jittery, but the thing about communication after sex is that she’s never quite mastered it, so she doesn’t bother trying. He’s always been better at breaking the ice, anyway.

He pauses his work to give her a half, kind-of smile in the mirror.

“You’re up,” he says.

“Mm.”

“I was going to let you sleep in, even though we have to leave soon.” He hesitates, then the corners of his mouth lift higher, as if he’s reminiscing. “You know, you’re cute when you sleep. You don’t look like you actively want to murder me, like you normally do.”

“Creepy,” she remarks, but she can’t help her smile; she’s done exactly the same thing.

He laughs quietly, and when he’s done shaving he turns to her. 

“How’s the hangover?”

She smiles at him, coy. He’s sweet, she realizes, always so chivalrous and worried. He’s always clever about checking in with her, too.

“Hey, I told you, I wasn’t drunk,” she reminds him. “You weren’t taking advantage of me.”

He blows out a breath of relief. “Just checking.”

“I know because I remembered everything from last night.”

His eyebrows are raised at her, but the edges of his mouth give away his smile. “ _Everything_ , huh?”

She hums. 

“What I don’t understand is why we slept in my tiny pull-out bed,” he says, gesturing out the bathroom. “There’s a perfectly good, normal bed next door.”

“I’m gonna say that’s your fault,” Devi says. 

“What? Why?”

“If you wanted to have sex in the bigger bed,” she explains, “you should have let me ambush you on my side of the room.”

He smiles down to himself again, the kind where he’s smiling into his chest. 

She steels herself for the next part; reality has to come back somehow. 

“I need to tell you something,” she says.

He sobers immediately. 

She takes the silence as an indication to talk.

“Look, I like you,” she tells him, then closes her eyes, because that’s not all, not really. “The amount I like you is—I can’t even—it’s fucking embarrassing. I can’t even actually describe it. Like, you can’t tell anyone.”

He’s nodding encouragingly and his mouth is curved up, still waiting for her to say more.

“And what I’m trying to say is—” she huffs out a weak, earnest laugh, “I don’t think what just happened was a mistake for me, because I meant everything that I said last night. I thought this wasn’t what I wanted but I was wrong.” She tries not to sound too pathetic here: “I want you. I want to be with you.”

He moves to her, moves in _close_ , and brushes her hair back, tucks it behind her ears. “Can I talk now?” he asks.

“Yes,” she breathes.

He examines her up close, his fingers still ghosting her jaw. She hasn’t brushed her hair or put on makeup or done anything about the bags under her eyes, which she's certain look particularly gruesome in the morning, but the way he’s smiling at her makes her forget all of that.

“As if it wasn’t obvious enough already,” he quips, then, “I like you too, Devi. I—” He frowns. “I mean, I was _really_ fucking obvious about it, I thought.”

“You were obvious,” she assures him. “I’m just stupid.” 

She’s flustered at the sight of his widening grin, more flustered than before, if that’s even possible.

His eyes are happy, crinkled at the edges. 

“We’re both kind of stupid,” he agrees fondly, and the way he says it is enough for her to fling her arms around his shoulders and draw him close to her for a long, fervent kiss. 

His arms wrap hungrily around her waist and he groans into her mouth when he notices that she’s not wearing a bra. She can feel the hard planes of his abdomen flush against the flimsy material of Ben’s shirt. The cotton fabric of his button down is the only barrier between their two bodies, and it suddenly feels _very_ thin. 

Devi pulls back when she remembers the state she’s in. Their lips separate with a pop. 

To her delight, he looks disappointed at the abrupt stop.

“What was that for?” Ben asks, feigning offense. 

“I shouldn’t have just kissed you,” Devi apologizes breathlessly.

“Yes, you should have.” He grabs her hips playfully. “In fact, you should do it again. We can do more than kiss if you want.”

“No, my breath,” she argues, pulling away. “I haven’t brushed my teeth. I just woke up—and my breath is—” she huffs into her hands and sniffs. “God, ugh. That’s terrible.”

“Your breath is not great,” he concedes, but he’s grinning again and his eyes are so blue and so earnest and so, so pretty in the morning light. “But I don’t care.” 

He kisses her again urgently, and she allows him a few pecks before swatting him away again and checking the time on her phone. 

“Wait, Ben, we have to pack. We’ve got to leave for check out in, like, forty minutes.”

“You’re killing me here,” he groans.

“I don’t get why you’re complaining,” she teases. “Aren’t you usually such a stickler about this kind of thing? Getting places on time and whatever?”

“Are you calling me a distraction again?”

She ignores the bait, and chooses to walk to his bed and bend over to pick up her discarded dress from last night. When she looks back over her shoulder Ben’s eyes are dark.

“You’re diabolical,” he says. “You are genuinely evil.”

She smiles coyly. “Well, we made a real mess last night. We need to,” she drops her voice here, “ _clean it up_.”

“Okay, that’s it.” He crosses the room to where she is, pressing his mouth to hers. “I deserve ten minutes and then we will pack. And if we miss check out it’s _your_ fault.”

She tackles him onto the bed, dress forgotten and dropped back on the floor. He lets her pin him down first with a laugh; she can feel him cradle her face with both hands when he rolls her over and peppers kisses on her mouth, her cheeks, her eyelids, and she realizes—well. 

If _this_ is the result of a white lie, she really doesn’t feel too terrible about it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thank you so much for reading, and thank you all for the encouraging comments and kudos!! if you want to cry over aged-up ben/devi with me, let me know what you want to see next, or even just talk nhie season 2 theories, [my tumblr is here](https://shakespeareans.co.vu/)! come hang :)
> 
> (p.s. for added effect, you can listen to _lover_ by taylor swift during the slow dance scene.)


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